


Watch the Throne

by olivieblake



Category: The Constant Princess - Philippa Gregory, The Cousins' War Series - Philippa Gregory, The White Queen (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-11 12:51:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15315897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivieblake/pseuds/olivieblake
Summary: Perhaps we come from different worlds of madness, and you and I are the wildest of both.





	1. Stolen Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurorarsinistra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurorarsinistra/gifts).



> For Aurora's birthday, one story each day for five days. Varying degrees of devastation; a fair amount of explicit sexual things. Also, all of this is canon, I swear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henry VII is the son of Margaret Beaufort, the 'red Queen,' and Edmund Tudor. He is the heir to the house of Lancaster. He won the crown by defeating Richard III of York and then he married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daugher of the house of York (Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville). Her younger sister, eventually the second surviving daughter, is Cecily.

**Stolen Gold**

_Book: The White Princess  
_ _Pairing: Henry Tudor (Henry VII) x Princess Cecily of York_

* * *

Son of one or not, Henry Tudor was born to be king. His birthright was a throne, a crown, a country, from the moment he took his first breath. It was a throne he had scarcely touched, true, just as it was a crown he’d only seen on one or two occasions, and it was a country he had fled as a boy. But he was born to a king’s destiny, and therefore his road was chosen for him; as unrelenting and unceasing as his blood.

Henry Tudor was born to steal a title in order to own his rightful kingdom, and therefore Henry Tudor, born of the house of Lancaster, was almost certainly born to marry Elizabeth of York as well, and to carry her off with his destiny whether either of them wished him to or not.

On sight, he supposed he could have done worse, though he might have hoped (in surprising ways) to do better. ‘Beautiful’ was not a keen word for what Princess Elizabeth was. She was beautiful, yes, but far worse than that, she looked like royalty incarnate. Henry hated her and loved her on sight, if only because she looked, unquestionably, like she belonged on the throne; not like him. He was tired, ragged, ill-cared for, constantly looking over his shoulder, feeling his enemies at his back. Elizabeth, like all the Yorks, was golden as the sun itself; like the crown and all its jewels had been spirited to life.

She also looked like a woman who had already belonged to another man. To Edward, her father, firstly; she bore the famous York coloring, with her father’s golden hair and her mother’s bewitching grey gaze. Then to Richard, and that was far worse. Elizabeth looked like a woman who had sworn the most intimate of fealties to someone who’d borne Henry’s crown before him, and she also looked at Henry like she wished he had died; perhaps she still wished it.

If something were to happen to Elizabeth—if she's barren, which is just about all that matters at this point—Henry must still wed one of the Yorks. This is as undeniable and formulaic as his betrothal to Elizabeth, and so he thinks little to nothing of it when the others are brought before him as well. First Elizabeth bows, scarcely concealing her hatred, and then her mother, Edward’s queen, steps back, revealing her numerous progeny in the doorway.

“My other daughters,” the dowager queen Elizabeth says, and for a moment, everything for Henry stops.

The many daughters of York are not born equal; that much is obvious on sight. They are all golden and grey-eyed and lovely, yes, but they are not some droning meadow of pretty flowers as far as the eye can see. One stands straighter than the others. One rose has fewer thorns, or perhaps sharper ones. At first glance, it’s impossible to tell.

Henry was born for an alliance, not for love, which is why when he sees Cecily of York, he knows instantly lightning has struck; he sees the devolution of himself in the strike of an instant. Still, he determines it best to say nothing; to ignore it. He’s felt fanciful, fleeting imitations of love before; he’s been with women. He’s nearly thirty, after all, and hardly inexperienced. He holds his composure, meeting each of the York daughters, until he arrives at Cecily’s hand.

“Something wrong, Your Majesty?” Cecily murmurs to him, inaudible to her sisters or her mother, and Henry, who has done nothing his entire life but claw for the very thing he has finally stolen from the Yorks, is perilously close to coming undone by the one standing before him.

Nothing is wrong, he thinks, and yet everything is wrong.

* * *

He half-mumbles it to his mother later, the words spilling out like a dream.

“I have to have her,” he says, and it has been the only thing pulsing in his chest since the moment he took the crown from Richard of York. Henry has found the acquisition of a lifelong desire to be something of a mixed blessing; he has been highly purposeless since achieving his only goal.

Until Cecily, that is.

“Then have her,” Margaret says disinterestedly, “but do not think yourself fool enough to marry her. She’s been touched as surely as Elizabeth has been touched,” she adds with disapproval, referencing the marriages arranged to lessen the York princesses under Richard’s seizure of the throne, “and worse, she is third-born. A less valuable prize.”

Henry cannot think how this is possible. Elizabeth is proud and stubborn and hateful. Cecily is bright-eyed, clever, strong. _You’re staring, Your Grace,_ she murmurs to him one night when he greets her, and it takes everything he possesses not to fall at her feet.

“You’ll have to marry Elizabeth,” Margaret tells him again.

Henry closes his eyes.

Perhaps they will look the same in the dark.

* * *

They don’t. Even with his eyes closed, Elizabeth is still Elizabeth, and Cecily is somewhere out of reach. He can hardly finish when he’s inside Elizabeth; her loathing of him is palpable. Tactile. Henry knows he’s virile—has born a son once before, in fact—but something about his mother’s certainty that the York girls are witches makes him doubt himself. Fucking Elizabeth is a chore. She hates him; so be it. He hates her, too.

He leaves after the first time, which feels wretched and twisted and wrong, even to him. They should be married, but Margaret insists on proof of a son, first. She wants certainty, as she always has. She is a ruthless warlord. Henry is often grateful his mother was born without a cock, even if it means she rules the use of his.

He runs into Cecily as he is escaping Elizabeth’s chambers and immediately panics; he can’t bear to look at her.

“How was the merchandise, Your Grace?” Cecily asks him coolly.

Is she angry for her sister’s virtue? Impossible. Elizabeth fucked her own uncle, for Christ’s sake. Perhaps it’s concern for her sister’s comfort, which is certainly valid. Even Henry would have preferred a more willing partner, but that was never going to happen; not under Margaret Beaufort’s watch.

Henry wonders, though, if he imagines a brief tone of envy in the younger York princess’ voice. Is it possible she wishes that he had—?

No. No, that can’t be it.

“Princess Cecily,” he says, voice dry, and bows to her, hoping to escape. It’s only when she smiles slowly that he realizes what a fucking idiotic thing he’s done.

 _He_ is king. She is meant to bow to _him_.

“Call me Cecily, Your Grace,” she offers, sounding amused.

A thousand expletives lounge against his tongue.

“As you wish,” he says, and swallows, “Cecily.”

* * *

When Elizabeth is with child Henry begins to relax. He can’t fully, of course, because he has enemies from all sides to contend with, and to his dismay, Cecily isn’t growing any less beautiful, nor any less present. He sees her at court constantly. She’s the sister of his queen, so this is no surprising revelation, but still. He wishes he were less acutely aware of where she stands at any given moment.

During Elizabeth’s coronation as his consort, he forces himself not to look at Cecily at all. He begs himself not to turn and glance in her direction. He pleads for his gaze not to falter, and stares only at his pregnant wife. His queen.

But Jesus God Almighty, women like Cecily are made for staring; for devouring like works of art; and as surely as he’s known before it even happens, once Henry accidentally looks at Cecily of York, he cannot look away.

He tries to escape when the festivities are dying down. He has no interest in seeing his wife; his work there is done, anyway. He won’t be bedding her again until after the baby is born. There are also other women. Other blonde women, even if their hair isn’t quite so golden. Other grey-eyed beauties _do_ exist, he reminds himself. He is king. He can have any one of them.

Still—“Cecily,” he says, catching her arm as she moves to pass him, exiting her sister’s chambers.

“Henry,” she replies, which is something he should not permit. He is king. He is _king_ , damnit, and—

“Please,” he whispers, “please, I am… Cecily. I am desperate.”

He has already promised her to a Lancastrian, Viscount John Welles. Cecily isn’t Henry’s, not in any way, nor is he hers, nor should he be. Henry hasn’t touched her, not yet, but somehow, they both know how badly he wants to. _He_ knows he wants to, and she looks like she can read his every thought. He dies quietly as he waits for her expression to change; to indicate he’s said it out loud.

He waits for deliverance, but she only strikes. “Desperate for what, Your Grace?”

“Please.” He forces his eyes shut, shuddering. “My God, Cecily, _please_.”

For a moment, he waits in silence, expecting yet another axe of cruelty to fall. A blade would be more merciful.

“What will you give me, then, Henry?” He can hear the smile in her voice as she murmurs it to him. Is this better or worse than feigning ignorance? Hearing her entertain the matter of his wanting, guileless or not, numbs him from his shoulders to his toes. “I can’t have your body,” Cecily points out. “Not exclusively. That belongs to my sister. I can’t have your crown; that, too, is hers. So what will you give me?”

“I—” He cradles his head in his hands. “What do you want?” he asks her, so quietly he can’t believe she hears it.

He feels her step closer. She brushes her fingers across his lips, carefully. Her touch is feather-light and delicate. He shudders so savagely he half-expects to break.

“Your soul,” she decides after a moment.

That, he hopes, is not for sale; still, it seems inevitable that anything he possesses, he would give to her.

“Take it, then,” he breathes, and she removes his hands from his face, holding them in hers as his eyes slowly open, fixing gradually on hers.

She is watching him curiously, her lips parted slightly, taking him in.

Then she leans up on her toes, his hands still in hers, and brushes a kiss impossibly softly against the side of his mouth, nearer to his cheek than to his lips. Still, he can taste her. He can taste the spices of the mead they’ve both drunk, only mixed with something sweeter. He imagines the taste of her to be like sugared plums and licks it, slowly, from his lips.

She releases his hands and lets her fingertips trace down his thigh, once along the outside and then across and up and _oh_ until her palm closes around the undeniable stiffness of his cock.

“Interesting,” she says, and looks down. She strokes her thumb over his tip, the shape of it visible through the fabric of his trousers, twice. It’s terribly ironic she thinks his body belongs to Elizabeth when really, only Cecily does this to him. She’s barely touched him, and still he’s got a cockstand he could very well use to break down a door. He could win a joust with the effect she has on him. “And what do you suppose I feel for you, Henry?”

He feels his eyes widen; then, unable to stand the wait, he takes hold of her and spins her, shoving her back against the wall. They are both breathing unsteadily, hard but not-quite-panting, and neither blinks. He wants to fuck her, wants it more than anything, but knows that one time will never be enough, and something in her eyes tells him she won’t let him touch her again if he forces himself on her now. Instead, he eases his grip, gently guiding one of her legs up over his hip, and carefully slides a hand under her gown.

Her legs are long and slender, soft to the touch. He shifts her in his arms, adjusting his weight, and carefully strokes his thumb between her legs.

She’s so wet for him he thinks it more than likely he’ll fucking burst.

“Don’t,” she says, and he blinks, looking up at him. “You can’t have me yet.”

“Then when?” he asks.

“When I let you,” she says easily, without strain or effort, and gives him a shove. He releases her unwillingly, and she walks away, not looking over her shoulder. She leaves him.

She leaves him, and he lifts his hand to his mouth, feeling the slickness of her at his fingertips.

He presses his hand to his lips, breathing her in.

He hopes he dies with her on his tongue.

* * *

The night of her wedding to John Welles, Henry can no longer bear it. He watches his wife with her and keeps his distance, but when he realizes someone else is going to touch Cecily that evening, Henry is suddenly feverish with desperation. He paces his chambers for nearly an hour, half-listening to his mother drone on.

“You’re not even listening,” Margaret snaps. “If Edward’s son still lives and Elizabeth is permitted to continue raising his supporters, what do you suppose is going to happen to you?”

He should be listening. He should really be paying attention. He should _not_ be thinking about the motion of Cecily’s breath, or her grey eyes gazing up at him. He can no longer stand the distraction, nor the weight. He is king.

He is king, so he doesn’t need to threaten the guards or bribe them when he appears in her chambers, but he does anyway. Cecily doesn’t seem surprised.

“Henry,” she says, languishing idly on the bed she’ll soon share with her new husband, who’s probably downstairs somewhere drinking his fill and not even knowing what a valuable thing he’s just bought.

Henry knows, though. Henry knows, and he settles himself on his knees beside her bed, as he did when he was a child praying to God for the English crown.

“Cecily,” he says just as reverently, “please, let me have you.”

She sighs, as if she finds the whole thing relatively tiresome.

“Are you king or not?” she says. “If you want me, Henry, take me.”

He looks up, surprised. “But—”

“I should be at least as hard-fought as that crown of yours,” she says, and leans over, flicking a finger against it. He forgot he was even wearing it, and he immediately forgets about it now, catching sight of the swell of her breast as she leans towards him.

He instantly rises to his feet, stripping his tunic and about to remove his crown when she shifts to her knees, holding his hand still.

“Leave it on,” she says, half-smiling, and he convulses with want.

He takes her in his arms and shoves her back, uncertain what he wants to touch first. What does he want to taste? Her mouth, her breasts, her cunt? He opts to lean back and shove her shift up over her hips, probably bruising her waist with the pressure of his fingers. She has such fragile, delicate skin, and he lowers his mouth to it, apologizing for his brutality with a kiss. She shoves her foot against his chest, pressing the arch of it hard until he realizes she’s kicking him away, and he straightens with a jolt, dizzied and stung.

“I’m not my sister,” she says, her foot firmly pressed into his chest, “so this had better not be a chore.”

He gapes at her.

Then, without warning, she rolls him onto his back. Him, the man who stole the crown of England; plucked it from Richard’s bloodied head. He lands on his back with a startled grunt and she slides her shift from her shoulders, starkly bare before him. Elizabeth’s breasts are inviting and full, her waist curved and idyllic, but Cecily’s angles are sharper, the slopes of her more harsh, more striking. Henry looks and looks and looks and Cecily takes his chin in her hand, fixing his gaze on hers.

“Henry,” she says impatiently, “you’re the King of England. Don’t gawk.”

He swallows, and she lifts a brow, waiting.

Then he slides one arm around her waist and settles her on his chest, tugging her leg with his free hand and shifting on the bed until she’s straddling his jaw, bracing herself against the post of her marriage bed.

He licks her, feels her shiver, and feels an instant sensation; a cooling sense of relief that cascades over him, and he slides his tongue into her, burying it in the taste of her, until he feels her tighten her grip in his hair. He sucks at her, licks, buries his nails in the skin of her thighs, until he feels her start to tremble above him; the pillar of undeniability that she is finally brought to quaking blows. She comes as his crown digs into his scalp and he cannot even feel the pain, caught up in the knowledge that he has tasted both the heights of glory and the depths of desperation between the shaking thighs of Cecily of York.

He rolls her onto her back and yanks one leg up, hooking his arm beneath her thigh.

“Cecily,” he says hoarsely, “you will ruin me.”

She reaches down, curling her palm around his shaft, and tightens her fingers around him.

“It will be my very great pleasure, Henry Tudor,” she whispers, “to make a wreckage of you.”

He slides into her and moans into her neck, praying this will satisfy him.

But even before her nails sink into his back, he knows it will never be enough.

* * *

Henry is king, anointed by God (and better yet, his mother) and yet he is held captive by the duties of childbearing. His son Arthur is a fine, handsome baby boy, and yes, he has an heir—a _son_ , and one son is more than enough for a legacy; look at Henry, the only son of Edmund Tudor—but there is no joy in bedding Elizabeth. There is not even something close to joy, like lust. It’s business between them, her head turned to the side while he closes his eyes and thinks of Cecily.

God, he thinks, Cecily is no woman. She’s a woman-shaped trap. He’s fucked her twice now, once on her wedding bed and once, hurriedly, in her sister’s chambers—when he could not help but take her up against the wall—just before going into confinement with her sister. Since she’s returned, she has been painfully disinterested in him. He frequently entertains nightmares in which she comes at the hands of someone else. 

Elizabeth is hopeless. He pulls out of her and turns her on her back, eyeing the line of her neck. This, he thinks, is where Elizabeth is most like Cecily. The York girls have spines like towers. They never bend.

He closes a hand around the back of Elizabeth’s neck, holding her steady, and pushes into her again. She seems to prefer not looking at him, and he looks at the golden hair he holds in fistfuls and his brain screams _Cecily, Cecily, Cecily_.

The next day, he passes Cecily as she’s walking back from chapel. She has a serenely placid look on her face and he takes her hand, pulling her into his privy council chambers and barring the door.

“Just what do you think is going to happen, Henry?” she asks, unmoved.

He bends his head and kisses her. She bites his lip with a laugh.

“I want you for a whole night,” Henry says. “One night, from sunset to sunrise.”

“Well, if the King himself cannot have what he wants,” she says drily, “it must be a highly impossible task.”

He wants to tear open her bodice. Wants to plunge one of the damned writing implements on his desk directly into his neck and bleed out at her feet.

“If I arrange it, will you come?” he asks, and already, his hands tremble on her waist.

“I suppose if I have no other engagements,” is her only reply before she slips out of reach, letting herself out of his chambers.

* * *

He sends her husband away on an errand to the crown and feigns ill. He writes her a note, telling her the secret ways into his chambers from the castle battlements, begs her to come. He tells her he will do anything she asks.

Still, he’s surprised when she comes to him, her cloak pulled over her golden York hair.

“Henry,” she says, nodding to him as she enters his chambers and lets the cloak fall. She is wearing her shift underneath, but nothing else. He reaches for her without hesitation, and for once she seems satisfied by this. Perhaps pretense would have struck her as mundane. He holds her, breathing in the petal-softness of her hair, and she permits it, saying nothing. He touches his lips to her cheek, to her jaw, to her shoulder.

He wants to tell her he longs for her. He wants to tell her loves her, actually, but he’s certain she’ll laugh in his face. Elizabeth is cold, but Cecily is cruel, and she owns him. Elizabeth is as undeniable as Henry’s right hand, as his crown. Cecily is the dream he clings to with every stolen breath.

When Henry lays Cecily back on the bed, he thinks maybe she can feel his reverence. He is softer with her this time, more devoted. He lets his lips and tongue and teeth linger each time he places them to her body, letting them make a home in the parapets of her skin. He will not say the words, but he plans to make love to her tonight. He plans to love her tonight, all night, whether she knows it or not—though she probably will. She knows him as much as she owns him.

She tightens her legs around his hips as he enters her, and when he curls his tongue around the bead of her nipple, she lets out a quiet sigh, her hand rising to slide through his hair. Translation: she enjoys it when he fucks her. She likes the feel of him inside her, and he, Henry Tudor, will make Cecily of York come until the both of them are numb.

A piece of his heart breaks off and buries itself inside her.

“Henry,” she murmurs in his ear, her breath rising steadily in the way he knows means she’s going to come, “you killed my brothers, imprisoned my cousins, married me to a Lancastrian fool, and stole my father’s crown, and for all those things, I will never forgive you.”

He freezes for a moment, pausing to look at her. She isn’t angry. She says it like it’s fact. She drills her heels into the backs of his thighs, digging them hard into the base of his arse.

“Harder,” she says simply, and laughs, letting his head fall against her. They’re both sweating and panting, breathing hard and struggling in the midst of tangled sheets, and he is helpless for love of her. He kisses her and she laughs, her sharp tongue dancing luxuriantly along his.

“I used to think you’d be a giant, you know. That you’d taste like carnage and blood and death—but really you taste so sweet,” she whispers to him, and he thinks, deliriously, that maybe she could love him. Maybe one day she’ll love him.

The next morning, when he wakes, she’s already gone.

* * *

 It only occurs to him after he and Elizabeth have shouted at each other behind closed doors that of course his wife has not been visiting her traitorous mother. She is watched so very closely by his _own_ mother, after all, and Margaret has a discerning eye. Of course it isn’t Elizabeth who’s been feeding information to Bermondsey Abbey.

“Are you helping your mother?” he demands from Cecily. Her husband is away again. Henry’s made sure of it. Similarly, his visits to Elizabeth’s bed are as sparing as he can make them. Cecily, on the other hand, is a fixture in his chambers whenever he can arrange for such things to happen.

She gives him a withering look. “I’m a fucking York, Henry,” she says, and he feels an icy chill in his soul. All his life he has feared those who would stand against him, and now the woman in his bed professes her loyalties without shame. He feels lost, and lonely, and uncertain.

“I thought you were mine,” he says quietly, and she shrugs.

“I said I would have you,” she says. “I didn’t say you would have me.”

He hopes this is a lie. By now he has seen her come a thousand times, a thousand ways; has heard his name on her lips in countless different voices, but none of them have been empty. He is not nothing to her. Surely he is not nothing to her. Surely he has some right to her heart.

“Cecily,” he says, and pulls her close, looking into her grey eyes and compelling them to tenderness. “Cecily, do you really hate me so much? Would you rather I were dead?”

Because I would die without you, he doesn’t say.

She strokes the tips of her fingers along his jaw.

“I don’t hate you, Henry,” she says, “but I don’t belong to you, nor you to me.”

“I’m yours,” he tells her, because from the moment he saw her, he has been. “I’m yours, Cecily. I’m yours.”

He will make love to her at least once more this night. He can already feel himself growing hard again, and the way her hips lean into his is an invitation he physically cannot deny. He would fuck her with his dying breath and not regret it for an instant. He would love her with it, too.

“How sad for you, Henry,” Cecily whispers, and then she kisses him again, drawing him between her legs.

* * *

For a while after his daughter is born, Henry’s reign is doing better. It’s much more secure, or so he thinks, and feeling confident in his rule, he tries to keep away from Cecily’s side. He and Elizabeth are softer to each other now, more kind. Sometimes she even welcomes his touch, and he comes to her more frequently. For a time, he is something like happy.

But then The Boy comes to court.

Henry calls him Perkin Warbeck, the least English and least royal name he can produce of the names that can be attributed to him. It is the furthest name from Prince Richard of York, anyway, and that’s what matters. Henry, in his concern, warns Elizabeth not to show any recognition, in case he truly is Richard.

But actually, in the moment, it is Henry himself who knows for certain The Boy is a York. He knows it from the coloring, from that stately golden York blond. He knows it from the build, which is so like Edward’s, to the point that even Henry’s mother Margaret cannot deny the resemblance. But Henry knows most of all, more than he has ever known anything, that this Boy is Cecily’s brother. He is her blood.

He has her _precise_ eyes.

Elizabeth is tentative, claiming loyalty to him, but Henry cannot stand to see the Boy’s face. He makes sure the Boy is broken, his beautiful York face bloodied, his eyes too swollen to see through when Henry faces him, determining he should be gone. Henry even pays special attention to the Boy’s pretty young wife, wanting him to be as crushed to nothing as humanly possible. It’s a cruelty that feels familiar to Henry.

It’s a cruelty he knows comes from Cecily, and when he finally seeks her out, she doesn’t bother to look surprised.

“It’s monstrous what you’re doing to him,” she says dully.

He looks in her grey eyes and loves her so intently he wonders if it’s hate.

Her husband, John Welles, died earlier that year. Now Cecily is widowed, and yet still, she isn’t his.

“You’re going to kill Edward, aren’t you?” she asks, speaking of her cousin, the young Duke of Warwick.

Henry doesn’t reply, and she levels her gaze at him with malice.

“This time, when you fuck me,” Cecily says, “don’t tell me you love me.”

He kisses her as roughly as he can manage and she kisses him back with spite, and as terrible as it is, he feels better. He feels the madness ebb, if only for a moment, when Cecily is in his arms. He cannot have her, not ever, and this moment, like his crown, is stolen.

With Cecily pressed against him, Henry can fully profess his sins as a thief, and he absolves himself inside her until they collapse together, hatefully locked in one another’s arms.

* * *

“You’re what?” he asks, dumbstruck.

“My sister is dead,” Cecily tells him, “and you’ve taken all of my family from me. You took my cousin Edward. You locked my mother away until she died. Now my sister is gone.”

“I—” Henry falters. “But—why would you—”

“I married Thomas Kymbe,” she says. “He’s kind. He’s a good man. He will—” She pauses, curling her tongue around whatever she’s about to say. She eventually settles on, “He will permit me to do as I wish.”

Henry gapes at her. “He’s nothing, Cecily. A squire.”

“Yes,” Cecily says with a stubborn nod, “exactly. Why should I aim for anything higher?” she demands. “You are a king, Henry, and still your love cost me everything.”

For a moment he thinks he hears something like sadness, which is an unusual softness from Cecily of York. But it doesn’t last, because he’s furious; because he’s aching, thinking finally they were free. Elizabeth had died in childbirth only days before, and now this.

“You did this without my permission,” he says, gritting his teeth, “and I’m supposed to be mourning _my wife_ —”

“Then mourn her.” Cecily’s voice is clipped. “You couldn’t have me, Henry, even if you wanted to. Your dead wife’s sister for a king’s consort?” she asks drily. “Believe me, I’ve done you a favor.”

But it doesn’t quite ring true.

“You want him,” Henry realizes. “You love him—is that it?”

Cecily sighs heavily, as if he’s being petulant. “You always make this about love. What exactly makes you think me capable?”

“You love me.” He rises to his feet and flings it at her. “You love me, Cecily!”

She has to, or none of this has ever been anything, and then what has it been?

What has _he_ been, if he has belonged so wholly to Cecily of York, and she has never loved him?

She shakes her head, turning away. “I’ll speak to you when you regain your head, Henry,” she says, and moves to exit, only he takes one look at the line of her neck and pauses her with a shout.

“GET OUT!” he shouts at her back, at the rigid line of her York spine. “You have defied your King, and as such, your lands now belong to the crown. You are banned from court,” he seethes at her, sliding the words through his teeth, and she turns slowly, her grey eyes finally wide with shock. “I never want to see your face again. You can starve to death, Cecily. You can die penniless and alone.”

She opens her mouth, about to argue, and then closes it.

“I may die penniless, Henry, but I will not die alone,” she says, meeting his gaze with rebellion. Her lips curl up in a taunt, and she says softly, so softly he thinks maybe he heard it in a fever dream, “I’ll die with my husband’s cock deep inside me, Henry Tudor, and it will be _his_ name on my tongue.”

Henry picks up a vase and throws it, letting it shatter against the wall, and she gives him her cruelest smile.

Then, before he can even think to sob, Cecily of York is gone, her golden hair still slipping through his fingers.

* * *

He refuses to see her after that, though the cost of her absence is bitterly steep. For weeks after Cecily is gone from court, Henry keeps to himself, using his wife’s death as reasonable explanation for his mourning. For years afterwards, he grants Cecily nothing. His mother helps her secretly, he knows, but he cannot bring himself to care. Perhaps he’s even glad for it. Let Margaret do whatever she wishes while he sleeps alone, dreaming of Elizabeth or Cecily or even sometimes both. His dreams of Elizabeth are always forced, stilted conversations about the children. His dreams of Cecily are like flames of memory; they are visions of him, of them, of being buried deep inside her, of being swallowed up by hell itself.

One night he dreams of her lying bare on his sheets, waiting for him. In one hand she holds a white rose, the symbol of the York line. In the other she holds his crown, beckoning to him before she places it on her own golden hair.

“Henry,” she whispers, taking his hand, “I will never leave you. From now until forever, I will never be gone from you.”

“Cecily,” he breathes in her hair, “I love you, I love you, oh God, Cecily, forgive me—”

“Henry,” she says soothingly, twining her legs around him, “do you know why I will never leave you?”

“Why?” he asks, dazed, as her lips brush his temple.

“Because,” she says with a delicate laugh, “you have already given me your soul.”

He shivers, and wakes with a start, and before his mother tells him the news, he already knows what she’ll say.

“Cecily of York is dead,” Margaret tells him tentatively, and from the moment his mother says it, Henry knows Cecily will haunt him until his dying day, and perhaps long after. Cecily, who owns his soul, will haunt whatever exists of him, from this day until he follows her to the grave.

Margaret waits for him to speak, but Henry says nothing. He merely rises to his feet and reaches for his crown; holds it delicately in his hands. For a moment he thinks to ask his mother: _Does this truly belong to me, or was it taken? Was I born to claim it,_ he wants to beg, _as much as it will never be mine?_

In the end, though, he puts it on his head without comment.

The crown, like Cecily’s hair between his fingers, is just another fistful of stolen York gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happens at the end of the story (in which Henry banishes Cecily from court for her marriage) is historically accurate. It's said that he mourned Elizabeth's death (which happened around the same time) in private for weeks, which was unusual, because Henry rarely showed emotion.


	2. Stranger in a Strange Land

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catalina, later known as Catherine of Aragon, is the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who united the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. Catalina married Arthur Tudor, the son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and became Princess of Wales.

**Stranger in a Strange Land**

_Book: The Constant Princess_ _  
_ _Pairing: Catalina, Infanta of Spain (Catherine of Aragon) x Arthur, Prince of Wales_

* * *

There was a time I did not love you, though I do not remember it now. Now, picture it: the wind whipping your golden hair as you meet me on the battlements, your cheeks flushed with cold as I press my lips to your skin, warming you with the heat of my breath. I pull you inside, dragging you worriedly to the fire, but you turn to me, and you take my hands in yours, and you say the most precious words; the words I have longed all day to hear.

“I’ve been waiting so long for you, my love.”

There was a time before you, I know. But unlike any time before, now is all that matters.

* * *

We were not always good to each other, you and I. Consequences of youth, but I do not forget my first sight of you. We were strangers then; I didn’t know you could hurt me, and I didn’t think I could hurt you; but for a moment, I think I saw what you would be to me before I really understood it. I saw your golden hair and pale skin and warmed to you on sight, finding you delicate, graceful. Beautiful, like a painting. All the things your father would change about you, I adored. The first time I saw you, I thought you were like a poet, a scholar, a storybook prince. You are all of those things, my love.

Eventually.

First you were stubborn and prideful, and I was prickly and vain. Beneath our unfavorable facades, though, you were frightened, and though I tried to deny it, so was I. I was a stranger in a strange land, a favored child of Spain left shivering at my icy reception, and you were the son of a ruthless king who could not love his wife, nor you. Before I understood it, I huddled in my fear, and you stood silent in yours. We stood apart, love, for so long before we stood together. I’d say those days were wasted, only they weren’t, were they? They were only the very first steps on the journey I took to you.

Our first time, at the house we stayed on our way to Ludlow from Oxford; do you remember it? Not our first time, really, but the first of something more. Not our first fight, either, but our worst one. Before that it had been merely gnashing teeth and childish games, each of us playing at war with the other, and then you took me through all that terrible English cold. Did you know the blizzard of my thoughts was not for the wind and snow itself, but for you? Of your face, the hardened way you looked at me, more statue than boy. I thought it was hatred. I thought it was hatred, and shivered at the sight of it. I thought I would die that day. I thought I would freeze to death in your wasteland of a country, burdened by the husband who could not love me, and who perhaps could never love at all.

But you were not a boy of stone, and oh, that I had known it sooner. The way you held my face like it was your most prized possession; I can’t forget that. My heart would sooner wither and die than forget. You have always had a rare smile, and you didn’t smile that day—not at first—but I saw again the kindness I’d first suspected in you from the way you held my cheeks, warming me. Did you feel it in that moment, as I did? The sense that it would not be the only time you and I touched with sparks that night.

You carried me to the fire; held me in your arms. You put me above your duties, even though you are a dutiful prince. You are the model prince, but still you loved me above your station, and I thank God for it, for you. That you called away our servants and let us spend a few precious hours alone together; that I could tell you about my life, my past, my customs. Your world was so strange to me, and I was so strange to you, and we needed it, didn’t we? We needed an evening to bring our worlds together, to give them our permission to combine. You thought I was mad, and perhaps I was. Perhaps we come from different worlds of madness, and you and I are the wildest of both.

“Can I comfort you?” you asked me. My love, my light, my prince.

“You did,” I said, “when you brought me to the fire and told me you were sorry. You do comfort me. I will learn to trust that you always will.”

You looked at me then, from the silk covering my hair to the image of you in my eyes, to the helpless parting of my lips. It was not for me to say I wanted you, but still I was yours for the taking, and did you see it then? Did you see the way my hands twitched towards you? Did you see my breath falter, when your gaze drifted along the lines of me the way I hoped your touch soon would?

You took me in your arms, and oh, how I used to loathe you. How I used to wish you’d disappear, leave me to return to my mother and my home, and now how I wished to curse every thread of distance remaining between us. You took me so slowly, so gently, and in my heart I thought _more, please, more,_ but you were careful, and you were kind, and I could see your hands trembling as they touched me, drawing the silk aside to place your lips tenderly at the hollow of my throat. I whispered your name; do you remember?

“Arthur,” I said, as reverently as I would speak of the most hallowed of things, because you are a myth brought to life. You are the king this land was promised, and the man I was forever meant to love.

“Catherine,” you whispered to me, and it was not the name of my childhood, but of the queen I would be; and I knew when it left your lips it was my rightful title. My true name.

We were young then, inexperienced, but you learned me quickly, scholar that you are. You learned that your tongue on my breast would reduce me to shivers, that the pressure from your fingers on my thighs would make me keen under your touch. The first time you touched me, gently between my legs, I saw on your face the rapture, the surprise. _For me_ ? you must have thought, and perhaps I trembled more for thinking _yes, yes, my love, for you_ , and then—oh, the look on your face when you decided you wanted to taste it. The way your eyes widened, and then you slipped away from me. I was ashamed for a moment, thinking you were repulsed by how much I desired you, but then I felt your lips on my stomach. On my hips. On the slickness between my thighs.

The moment you slid your tongue over me, did you know the way it would make me cry out? I didn’t know my fingers would tighten in your hair. I never dreamed anything could feel the way it felt then, the most indulgent of pains; the pain of wanting, and of waiting. I reached for you, half-crying out, but you didn’t move. You were a prince, intent on your way, and you gently put my hands on your shoulders.

“Stop me if you do not like it,” you said, and then you put your mouth on me again; kissed me in the most intimate of breaths, so that I wondered what your tongue would feel like in other places.

Did you know I would sob for you each time you did it? Even I had never heard my voice the way it was then, desperate and aching. I have heard the most beautiful poems about love and known them to be, at times, about sinfulness, and still never understood how both could be the same. How could love be so brutally distressing, and carnality so innocently pure? I never questioned my beliefs until that moment, but in your arms that night it seemed I must have known nothing at all.

You learned what the pressure of your mouth could do to me, and I learned that a moment could stand still in time. I let out another cry of something too sweet to be pain, and you looked up at me, concerned.

“Am I hurting you?” you asked, kindness on your face again, and I shook my head, gasping.

“Please don’t stop,” I begged, the three most selfish words I think I’d ever spoken, and shyly, you smiled.

I thought it couldn’t be love. They never said love was riotous like this. They never said anything about love’s violence. They never said a word about how love was savage and unsparing. They never said love was blistering, feverish and bewildering, like too much time in the sun. They never said love would leave me clinging to you, conscious of my every breath, the sensation in my belly like a twisting, coiling lurch.

“Is this love?” I asked you, gasping, and you slid up against me, leaving me to gasp again, still tingling from the languid toils of your mouth. You kissed me then, and tasted strange and unfamiliar, and slid your tongue against mine like you had just done, only slower, careful, like reading the lines of a page. You wanted to know me, didn’t you? To know me by taste, by sight and sound, by touch.

“If it isn’t love, Catalina,” you whispered, sliding yourself into me, “then it is madness,” and I know you were right, I know it; I know now more than ever you were right that day, the first time you truly held me in your arms, and I learned just how perilously I could want. I was mad for you then, and I am mad for you now, and now you are in my arms after waiting wretchedly all day, and this is not sanity. This is not holy. This cannot be pure.

But this is love, isn’t it? Oh, surely this is love, and my darling, together we are divine.

* * *

Now you meet me at my door, you say those words. You pull me to bed, and now we are not so much strangers anymore, are we? Because now you know what makes me cry out for you, and I am not so much a girl that you are still discovering. I am a woman; I am Catherine, your wife, and your touch is crafted and learned, cultivated to your knowledge of me. You are the scholar of my pages, and you know as you beckon me to bed that you can bring me to eclipse in minutes, in seconds, in heartbeats that pass quietly in the night.

But you are partly the man your father thinks you are, because you do not rush your conquests; you do not take foolishly or selfishly. He thinks it is cowardice, your nature, but it is patience. It is patience, and the knowledge that when you are ready, you will prevail.

You don’t ask me for a story this night, not yet, and I’m glad for it. It wasn’t my home I was thinking of when I caught your eye at dinner, distracted from the music, from the merrying at court. You and I both know this is our duty, but we take our pleasures where we can, and it is not my history I think of when I catch you looking. Do you know what I would speak of now, if I could speak? The shape of your mouth, and how it betrays nothing. The scarceness of your smile is slow to reveal much at all—or would be, if not for your eyes, which are full of me.

“I want you,” you say, and you do not need me to say it—you know as much already—but I would never keep the truth from you.

“I want you,” I say, “as I have never wanted you before,” and perhaps I say it every night, but it is truer each time I speak it.

Later tonight we will dream out loud of the Camelot we will make, you and I. Later, when the sheets have twisted around us, you will hold me in your arms and I will lean against your chest and fall victim to episodes of wonder, to distraction, to visions of you in your armor and me at your side, your Guinevere and Lancelot both. I am your lover, your partner, your friend. I am your queen, your confidante, your right hand.

You are my king, and it would be treason to say it aloud because the throne is not ours yet, but we are children of defiance. We were both born of clashing bloodlines joined as one, of warring histories anchored together, and we know nothing else but that we were born to create the world over, to start anew. Later you and I will speak of our court, of the way we will rule, and paint our futures with whispers until the sun begins to show its face.

But it is not later yet. Now is now, and now you are hungry for me, and I am desperate for you.

“If I did not know you to be an angel I would think you a succubus,” you say to me, leaning me against the post of my bed. “Do you know I think of nothing but you? You’ve cursed me, Catalina, driven me out of my head, and all that’s left of me is wanting you.”

“I’m not an angel,” I tell you, smiling. “My dominion is only Wales, not heaven, and I only serve you, Arthur. I am your queen above all.”

“And yet I bow to you,” you say fiercely, dropping to your knees. You curl a hand around my ankle and I lean back, closing my eyes, as you slide your palm up the back of my calf. You ease my leg into your shoulder and kiss the curve of my thigh, tilting your head to look up at me. You know this will make me sigh out a breath for want of you, and still you want to watch it happen, as if it’s the first time.

This night is much like the others we spend together in secret, in that I cannot fight my need for you. I reach down, twining my fingers in your pale golden hair, and you take me in your arms again, easing me back onto my bed. Some nights you have no patience for my shift, only pushing it aside to touch me sooner, to reach me faster, but this night you slowly draw the fabric up, your fingers brushing my hips and my waist and my stomach and then my breasts, and then my neck, and then as you pull it over my head and let it fall to the floor, you touch my hair with awe, with wonder.

They say your grandfather, Edward IV, was the greatest man in England. They say your father, Henry VII, was a conqueror, a champion. I say you are better and more deserving than them both, and I am gripped with a sudden, ruthless breath of fear.

I hold you tighter. “What if this is all we get?” I whisper to you. “What if all there is to have is now?”

You smile at me, and it is rare and golden and fleeting. “Then we will have to make now worth having,” you say, but I am filled with terror still.

“Can we be so blessed as to have each other?” I say, because as I have heard it told, goodness doesn’t stay. Saints suffer. Martyrs die. Beauty never lasts, and love has a tendency to fade.

“Catalina,” you say to me, your lips soft on my throat, my chin, my lips and my cheeks, and then briefly above each of my brows, “you will always have me. Even if I have to defy heaven and earth to be yours.”

“But—”

You kiss me again, trace my fears with the certainty of your lips.

“Why waste a moment,” you say, “when we have wasted so many of them in the past? I wasted every second I was not professing my love to you today, and I will not permit another word to go unsaid.”

“Only words?” I lament, sighing, and you laugh.

You laugh, and you slide your hand down my hips until you reach the waiting gloss between my thighs; my body’s confession that I have been waiting for you.

“I will tell you,” you say, “in a language only you and I speak.”

Something holier than Latin, I suspect, and you fill me with ease, and tonight I will not let you go, because now we are everything, everything, everything, and now you touch me, and I touch you; now your steady gaze falters with desire, and my halted breath moves with yours; now you remind me, with each movement of your hips against mine, how tirelessly you love me; now I remind you, with each longing gaze that passes between us, how breathlessly I love you.

And this is a strange land of strange customs, and outside these walls I am a stranger, but I was born for this place, in your arms. And I know now, as I have long suspected and never dared to say, that you and I belong precisely where we are.

And I know, Arthur, as I know the unfailing beat of your heart: We are blessed, we are blessed, we are blessed.

* * *

We are cursed, you and I.

Since you’ve been gone I have been full of thens. Nows have lost all their meaning. I try not to live much in now anymore, because now is a darkened place, a woeful house. I did as you asked of me, my darling. I told the lie you begged me to tell, and never told anyone the truth of what you were to me. Sometimes I wonder if I did wrong, if I misinterpreted; if I should have said no, and clung to our love. I have been nothing but luckless and miserable since I denied you. I told no one about what you were to me, and now, as I lie here alone, delirious with pain and hunger and misery, I wish I had told the world. I wish I had shouted that I have only ever wanted you, only ever loved you, that at least your good name would not die with your body.

Now I think of your golden hair and your fleeting smile and I want to sob until my bones reduce to dust.

I’m glad, at least, that your death was far better than mine. You died loved, young, beautiful. You died with the promise of a future. I am dying knowing my auburn hair you loved so much is grey now, thin and withered as I am. I lie here knowing I have been put aside, my daughter taken from me, my husband now enamored with a woman who will someday learn the cost of being a useless bauble for this faithless king to throw away. In the end, was Henry the worse liar, or was I? Anne will one day find out, I suspect; though, truth be told, the thought does not comfort me. Nothing comforts me, except my memories of you.

You, my love, are the last time I was happy. If I had known that now would be a time after you, perhaps I would have taken more care with then.

Now, I close my eyes; tired, bones aching. For a moment, I imagine I am back at Ludlow, waiting for you to take to the battlements, to take me to bed, to take me away from all of this. For a moment I am sure I’m here, even hearing your familiar footsteps, but I cannot bear to look. I can’t bear for you to see what I’ve become.

“Catalina,” I hear your voice sigh, and I grow rigid with apprehension. “Catalina, my stubborn princess, open the door.”

No, I want to say, this is a dream. This isn’t now. This is then.

“Catalina,” you say again, “would you really have me wait out here?”

I shut my eyes.

“Catherine, Queen of England,” you say, and it drives a blade of memory into my heart. Nobody calls me this anymore. “Catherine, my queen. Will you see me?”

“Is this now?” I whisper, and I reach for the door. Only then do I realize my hands are no longer wrinkled and thin. My skin is no longer pale and translucent. My hair falls over my shoulder, and it is bright again, as it once was. I blink, bewildered, but I open the door, and there you are.

There you are, Arthur. There you are, my storybook prince, not a day older from when I loved you.

“Finally,” you say, with your boyish exasperation. You are young and full of life, and more handsome than even I remember, the leanness of your youth still present in all the limbs of you that kept me warm. I hate that no one knew—not as I knew—just how beautiful you were; now I want to shout it, to loft you above Henry’s court of snakes, to point to you with sobs: _See? Now here is a true king_.

“Are you ready?” you ask me.

“Ready,” I echo, glancing over my shoulder. “Ready for what?”

“You are new here,” you tell me, half-smiling. “A stranger in a strange land once again, my Catalina. But I will be your guide, as I once was.” You hold out your hand to me, waiting. “I will keep you warm, Catalina, keep you safe. You can go home now.”

Your hand is outstretched for mine. “I’ve been waiting so long for you, my love,” you say, and suddenly I am certain: This is now. This is everything, everything, and there was a time before you, and yes, a time after you, but those times pale to nothing in the blessedness of now.

“I want you,” I say, because I do—above everything—and now it is a long-dormant feeling, but no less true. Once upon a time, the Princess of Wales said those words to the Prince, and did not know how desperately she would come to mean them.

“And I want you,” you agree, “but we have all the time in the world,” you promise me, and you pull me into your arms.

“Can you forgive me?” I whisper to you, fearful, but you slide your hands around my face, gifting me that rarest prize; that careful smile.

“Can I comfort you?” you ask me. My love, my light, my prince.

“You always do,” I say, and realize anew: _You always will._

Then you open the door to the battlements, shading your eyes from the sun and moon and stars, and you slide your arm around my waist.

There was a time before you, I know.

But unlike any time before, now is all that matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After Arthur died, Catalina claimed she was a virgin, swearing until her death that her marriage had never been consummated. She stayed in England to marry the next heir to the throne, becoming the first of King Henry VIII's six wives.


	3. Of Earth, Of You, Of Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jacquetta of Luxembourg was the wife of the Duke of Bedford, the wealthy brother of King Henry V. Richard Woodville is a squire who worked for the Duke at the time of Jacquetta's marriage until the Duke of Bedford's death.

**Of Earth, Of You, Of Fire**

_Book: The Lady of the Rivers_ _  
_ _Pairing: Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Duchess of Bedford x Richard Woodville_

* * *

They’re going to take her from him.

This is the thing that flashes in Jacquetta’s mind as she looks at Richard Woodville, knowing there are only days left to do so. For years, her husband’s handsome squire has seemed like nothing to her, and yet, in an instant—and in the most startlingly significant ways—she has finally realized he has actually been everything. Her husband, the Duke of Bedford, brought her here to be his mystic, to be kept as a pet or a golden goose or an oddity, but outside of the scrying and the seeings and the magic that could not keep him alive, Jacquetta has nearly forgotten herself that she has also existed here as a girl. As a person. As someone who wanted to feel the warmth of the sun on her face, and the steadiness of the earth beneath her feet; as someone who needed company and comfort, not just prodding and wealth; as _someone_ , and someone worthy, as Woodville has always treated her.

Jacquetta of Luxembourg has been a girl of water and air for too long, and now, because her elderly husband had the audacity to die, they are going to take her from Woodville; from the only true anchor she has ever known.

They are going to make her rich, and then leave her with nothing.

“How much time do I have?” she asks him. Woodville, she still thinks in her mind, though she knows he is Richard, and the lure of his name lingers temptingly on her tongue. “Before I have to go, I mean.”

“A week,” Woodville estimates. His expression is grave and uncertain. “Maybe less.”

“Where will you go?” she presses.

She had not considered the death of her husband would cost her more than simply her husband, and now, upon realizing it, she feels childish and lost. For years, only one thing has been familiar; only one thing has been constant, and now he will be gone.

“To Calais,” Woodville says, “and then, when a new captain is appointed, back home to England. Perhaps I will find a master I can respect,” he sighs. He is a chivalrous sort of knight, she knows, even if he is only a squire. “Or I will serve the king at English court, or become a crusader. Maybe I will go to the Holy Land.”

“But you’ll be gone,” she says, her voice strained. Unhelpfully, she remembers him as she first saw him; the strange sensation she’d had that she might wish to taste his mouth. It was that funny twist in his smile he still has when he looks at her, she thinks. She’d wanted to know how it felt beneath her fingertips, or on her lips—and the reminder of that compulsion strikes her with a vengeance now. “You’ll be gone from me.”

He opens his mouth and closes it; he hears what she’s really saying, even before she knows she’s said it, and he pulls her into a more private room, so that no one will interrupt.

“Before you go,” he says in a low voice, “I must tell you, My Lady. I must tell you that I love you. That I would have you, if I could. As my own, as my wife, as my love. If I had the world to give you, My Lady, I would offer it to you at once, without hesitation. Without pause.” His slate-colored gaze strokes her cheek. “I cannot let you go without you knowing there is someone on this earth who loves you. That no matter how far you go, Jacquetta,” he says, speaking her name for the first time and, perhaps, also the last, “I will love you. You must know that somewhere in this world, I am always with you, however far you are from me.”

“I—”

She can hardly speak. Love is a highly foreign thing. Jacquetta has only ever lived in a world where such a thing was too fanciful to exist, even among stranger magics.

“You love me, Woodville?” she asks, incredulous. Almost as if she is still learning how to walk, how to speak, how to be. She is less than a child now. She is newly born for having heard him, and she wonders how she can feel such flame and such fear and such yearning all at once.

“I do,” he says, earnest and kind and yet urgent, passionate. “And I needed you to know, before you went; that if you find you miss me, you can be comforted knowing you are not alone.”

With that, he’s said his piece. He expects nothing from her. He turns, beckoning her out of the room, but she has said nothing of consequence yet, and she pauses him.

“Richard,” she says, testing his name on her tongue, and he turns to look at her before she’s even decided what to say. She looks at her hands, first, and then at him, and then she can’t look away. He is everything. He is the _only_ thing, and words do not exist, or perhaps the order of them cannot be found, to express to him how deeply she feels; how hollow she is for losing him, and yet how satisfied at finally knowing his heart.

“Richard,” she whispers, more faintly this time, and then he understands. He takes her in his arms and holds her, his arms wrapped around her waist, and she gathers courage from his touch; from what alights in her chest as he pulls her into him, protective and warm and safe.

She reaches up and touches his mouth, as she once wished to.

“Love me, please, Richard,” she says, and his eyes fall shut, and then reopen.

“I will love you until the day I die,” he promises, and then he lowers his lips to hers, like she wants him to. He knows her so well, even now—though he can still surprise her. His kiss is tender and sweet until suddenly, it is something indescribably more. He transitions so effortlessly from chivalrous squire, a boy of little regard, to a man, to a knight, to a champion, whose broad hands slide up her dress and curve around her, holding her like treasure between his palms. She shivers beneath his touch, which reduces her to quaking thoughts of delirium, like what other things he can make her feel.

The thought alone—that there could be more to feel, and more to want, and _more, more, more_ —is abjectly terrifying.

“I don’t know how,” she says, stammering slightly and drawing back. “I don’t—My Lord, he never—”

She’s trying to tell Richard she’s a virgin, a girl of air and water, but the words sound silly, and she fears his love of his own honor means he will refuse her out of some sort of self-sacrificing sabotage. He blinks, registering the tension in her hesitation, and then he gently eases her back.

“We have a week,” he says. “I can teach you anything you want to know, if that’s troubling you. To prepare you,” he clarifies slowly, “so you don’t have to be afraid for your husband.”

She considers him.

He is caring for her again as he has always done, though it is no longer obligated by his master’s bidding.

“You would teach me?” she echoes.

“If you wish,” he promises with a solemn nod, and she swallows with difficulty, something that might be excitement or longing or terror sticking in her throat.

“Meet me tomorrow, then,” she whispers, and he nods solemnly, catching her hand and brushing his lips against her knuckles.

He was once the Duke of Bedford’s squire, but now he is her very own knight.

“I will, Jacquetta,” Richard says, and something inside her catches with flame.

* * *

She sneaks out to see him at night. Playing the grieving widow in a house full of hidden rooms has its advantages, and Richard is waiting for her in the Duke’s study along with all the other forbidden things.

“What first?” she says, and he considers it.

“Pleasure first,” he says. She isn’t sure what he means, but he coaxes her onto the table, where the scrying equipment once was. He sets her back carefully, trying to make her comfortable—hardly any different to when he taught her to ride her beloved horse, Merry—and then he trails her shift up her legs, running his fingers along her skin as he settles himself between her legs. His touch is slow, careful, reverent. He finds the smoothest plane of her thigh, slides his palm along it, and looks up at her as she shivers.

“Are you afraid?” he asks. He looks as though he might be.

“No,” she whispers. I am never afraid with you, she thinks.

He nods, and then he says, “I’m going to touch you.”

You’re already touching me, she thinks, but then his fingers change direction, running from the outside of her thigh to the curved inside, to the place she is more like the bend of a river. He moves slowly, carefully, and with his other hand, he tips her chin up.

“Look at me,” he says, “and tell me if you want me to stop.”

She meets his slate-grey eyes and inhales sharply as his fingers brush the place between her legs. He feels the rigidness in her back and pauses.

“Should I—”

“Don’t stop,” she whispers, and he nods, looking as though he’s holding his breath.

He slides his fingers into her, circles them inside her. His arm wraps around her ribs, lifting her just slightly, pulling her close, though he doesn’t look away. He’s watching her for signs of things she can’t say, and she’s grateful. She isn’t sure she wants to speak aloud _I’m afraid this makes me a whore but I’m far more afraid that you will stop and this feeling will end,_ but she thinks he can tell what she’s saying.

“I love you as a woman, Jacquetta,” he says as his fingers slide in and out of her, prompting her to sharpened, quickened breaths. “I’m only a man, and the only magic I know is how it feels to look at you.”

She disagrees. He is bewitching her now, surely, this man of the earth. Her head wants to fall back and she lets it, her neck exposed, and something in her begs him _kiss me, put your mouth on me, give me something more,_ and he responds with a brush of his lips to her throat. She shudders and keens, wriggles in place, and her mouth falls open. Breathing is difficult like this. Air is hard to come by with the rest of her so aflame.

He’s doing something else now, something she can’t see under her skirt and can hardly fathom, and he looks lost, his gaze fixed on her. He is whispering to her— _Jacquetta, I love you, I love the shape of your mouth, I love the words on your tongue; my love may not be worthy, but it is undying, and it is unending, and I long for you as a man longs for a woman but also as a soul longs for its mate, like one half longs for another, and now, like this, to touch you, I cannot let you go, I would rather die; let them cut out my heart, Jacquetta, because it is yours, because I am yours, because all of this, everything, is for you_ —and suddenly she gasps.

It must be magic.

What else could feel like this?

Something inside her roils, heaves, wrings itself out, fills to the brim and then empties; she blinks back excruciating sunspots of madness, delirium, furor. This is pleasure? she thinks, as it washes over her in waves and shudders out. It feels more like pain, only beautiful, in ways that lend meaning to the words ‘passion’ and ‘agony’ and ‘bliss.’ It feels like _pain_ , only she wants it again, and again, and _again_ —

“More,” she begs at a whisper, curling one hand around his neck, and Richard places his forehead against hers, shaking his head.

“I want more, too, Jacquetta,” he murmurs, “but not like this. Not here.”

She blinks, and considers it.

“My chambers,” she whispers. “Tomorrow?”

He nods, presses a kiss to her forehead. “Tomorrow,” he promises, and she wonders how she can possibly sleep, knowing there will have to be an entire day before he touches her again.

* * *

She tells him to use the private entrance to her rooms and she waits in her shift, on her bed, for him to appear in the doorway. The places he touched yesterday are aching for him again, and she almost wants to touch them herself, only she wants the man more than she wants the sensation. She wants to look into his eyes and lose herself there.

He arrives and doesn’t hesitate. They both know their time is limited.

“Some women like this,” he says, pushing her shift up and placing himself between her legs again as she leans against the bedding. She suffers a jolt of something—jealousy, she realizes, that he knows what other women like; that other women have touched him; that perhaps he has loved other women before.

He senses her tension and looks up, half-smiling, to draw a finger over her lips. “I told you I am just a man,” he says. “I’ve known desire before, the way any man does, but it wasn’t like this. If I had known I was waiting to meet you in order to feel something, to feel magic, I swear, Jacquetta, I would never have touched another woman until you.”

His lips linger on her thigh, and she forgives him. For now.

He lowers his lips to her and kisses the spot between her legs, threading his tongue inside her and then sweeping over her, saturating her with his mouth. She instantly gasps, holding his head steady.

“It’s too much,” she says, breathless, “it’s—”

“Be patient,” he says, and gingerly coaxes her into raising her hips up. “It’s not that you want less, Jacquetta,” Richard tells her, “it’s that you want more. And you can take it, because it’s yours. I am yours.”

He puts his mouth on her again and this time she moves against him, rewarded by the way his hands tighten on her hips. He takes more of her, devours her, and she writhes and moans and coils up inside and bursts, and her heart races, flying, exploding, speeding up to breathless heights and dropping back inside her to find him rising up and pulling her into his arms, tugging her close.

He kisses her now, voraciously, the way he did the first time. She tastes something sweet and strange and licks at it, sliding her tongue along his as his arms tighten around her. His hands rise to her breasts, tugging her shift down, and then his tongue slides along her nipple, and he rolls it between his fingers, and everything is in motion, and nothing about her is still. She pulls at his fine dark hair and lures him on top of her, grinding her hips against his, until suddenly he stops.

“We should wait,” he says hoarsely. “That’s enough for tonight.”

“We only have so many days,” she pleads, aching, and he shakes his head.

“We only have so many days,” he agrees, “and that’s why I can’t simply waste it all so quickly, Jacquetta. I cannot have all of you now. Not yet. I haven’t earned you.” He looks at her intently, gaze fixed on hers. “I could never have all of you until I had earned you, Jacquetta.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, and then opens them.

“Tomorrow?” she asks, already wondering how she will make it through the day.

“Tomorrow,” he says, and kisses her, and then he is gone.

* * *

There is no news yet on when she will have to leave, but she knows it’s coming. People are already beginning to look through her, not at her, as if she is a tapestry they will eventually come to replace. Everyone but Richard, of course, who must know his effect on her. He lets his eyes fall on hers rarely, but when he does, he holds his gaze only long enough for her to have a secret message she sends back to him: _I cannot wait to hold you tonight._

This time, when he comes to find her, she stops him before he comes towards her on the bed.

“I want to see you,” she says. He has always been clothed, but the fabric between them is distance she can no longer stand. He nods carefully, quietly, and then slowly removes his clothing, one article at a time.

Beneath his tunic, Jacquetta can see the hard lines of muscle that mean Richard has worked hard. He has toiled, in fact, and for his efforts there are carved edges of him, crevices in his stomach and chest, where work has taken pieces of him and turned him into something hard and rough and sculpted. She wants to curve her small palms over the smooth shape of his chest. She wants to draw her fingers in the lines of his abdomen. She wants to trail her tongue along the jutted lines of his hips. She wants to follow the path they make for her down, down, down, lower to where his hands drop, obediently removing his hose.

He doesn’t wear as much clothing as the Duke—he is, after all, only a squire—so he’s bare without much effort. Jacquetta sees the hardness between his legs and feels her brow furrow with curiosity, inching forward on the bed.

“May I?” she asked, holding one hand out.

He blinks, but steps closer.

She curls one hand around his cock, gripping it like the handle of a sword. He inhales sharply, and she watches his eyes flutter shut.

“Are they all like yours?” she asks neutrally, and he cracks one eye to look at her.

“I imagine so,” he says. She watches the muscle tighten around his jaw. Perhaps the thought of her with other men is as bothersome to him as the thought of him with other women. It occurs to Jacquetta that not only will she marry some other man, some stranger who isn’t Richard, but he will probably marry some other girl. Someone undeserving—someone who _isn’t_ the descendent of the goddess Melusina—will have a life with Richard Woodville, who the greatest man Jacquetta has ever known, and it occurs to her for the first time that life isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair at all.

She trails her fingers down the muscle of his thigh, studying him like a painting. Her own legs are soft and curved. His are like pillars, strong and steady, only she notices his breath is quickening the more she touches him.

“I don’t think other men look like you,” she says.

For a moment, he looks miserable. But then he steps closer and pushes her back on the bed, climbing onto it, and pauses with his hand on the hem of her shift.

“What would you like tonight?” he asks.

She says, without hesitation, “You, Richard.”

He pauses. Aches. She can see it. She reaches out and caresses his cheek.

“There are more ways to do this than can be accomplished in one night, aren’t there?” she asks him softly. “You can earn me again tomorrow, if that’s so important to you.”

He half-laughs, bends his head, exhales shakily.

“I want you so badly, Jacquetta,” he says. “So badly I think maybe I’m not meant to have you. That such a thing might kill me,” he swears passionately, “for having had too much of something I could never keep.”

“That’s stupid,” Jacquetta says, and he looks up, blinking. “What? It is. I could be gone, Richard,” she tells him stubbornly. “I could be gone, and you will never see me again. So do you really want to die for having had me, or for being the fool who let me go?”

He stares at her, breathless, and then in a rapid series of motions, he’s settled her beneath him on the bed, her shift yanked up to her waist and then pulled over her head, deposited on the floor. He looks down at her body, smoothing one hand over her stomach and her hips, and says, “I would die in your arms if I could, Jacquetta. No other death would be as honorable. No other place would be as holy, or as much my home.”

He permits himself to fall slightly, nuzzling his face into her neck and guiding her legs apart.

“Will you have me, Jacquetta?” he whispers in her ear.

“Richard,” she sighs, “did I not ask you to love me?”

She knows she is ready. She has been ready for him for hours, if not days. She knows it will cost her what she has been for so long, but she no longer has any interest in being the girl bought by the Duke of Bedford. Now she wants to be the woman in Richard Woodville’s arms.

He slides himself inside her carefully; fills her.

“I promise, Jacquetta, that everything I will ever do—” he swears, breath hot against her cheek. “Everything, all of it, will be an act of loving you.”

He moves his hips against her and she is lost, lost, lost. He moves, and she moves, and he holds her, and she clings to him, and while troubadours might say he makes love to her, she tumbles and falls headlong into madness with him.

“Richard,” she cries out, and he answers with another thrust of his hips, and then she feels it again. The ache of him; of being without him; of things she cannot dream of feeling without the view of his slate-grey eyes.

They might say he makes love to her, but that wording is too soft, and by now she knows much better.

He may be a man of earth, but she, the girl of air and water, is set ablaze by him.

* * *

There are many ways to do this; this act of defiance that is their love. While the night before she wanted him to hold her—let him curl himself around her and drift to sleep with her in his arms—this night she wants to know things. She wants to know _everything_. She wants to know that in two days time, which is when she suspects she will have to go, she will have memorized every line of him by heart.

This time, when she feels the euphoria he is building inside her, she remembers what he said to her before: that when she wants more, she can take it for herself. She pushes against him, and he stiffens for a moment, but then he realizes she wants to have control. He lets her roll him onto his back and slide onto him, to watch him from above; from on high. She wants to be the one to give him waves of pleasure. She wants to know one day he will close his eyes and think of her face, and when he does, he will see her like this, hair tumbling down around her breasts instead of spoiled against the pillows.

She leans back onto his thighs as she rides him, letting him see her for everything she is: a woman, not a girl. She knows now what to do when the impossible sensation inside her builds and needs release. She knows what friction she needs to get it. He promised her an education and she has learned, studied hard.

Now she knows herself, so she studies to learn him.

She learns his eyes close when she touches him here, but they open wide when she touches him there. She knows her fingers here will make him gasp. Here, her lips will make him shiver. There, at the right moment, he’ll whisper her name, helpless. There are places that make him moan. Places that make him tremble. There are ways to touch him that will make his grip tighten on her, holding on, and right here, at this pace, he will groan in ecstasy. And if she does this—this thing, or _this_ —he will look at her and find God in the details of her face.

“It’s unfair,” she whispers to him when they fall together, sweaty and sated and tangled in her sheets. “Why should someone else get to have you?”

He kisses the tips of her fingers. “I will never love anyone as I love you.”

“Still.” She buries her forehead against his chest. “I hate her. The woman you will make love to after me. She won’t know the things I know.” She brushes her fingers over his chest. “She won’t deserve to touch you.”

“And the man who loves you next,” Richard says, stroking her hair, “will be your husband. He will be the person meant to cherish you every night. You’ll bear his children. You’ll be his woman, his wife.” He swallows, and she feels his pain beneath her cheek. “I cannot hate him. He is too lucky a man, and tasked with too much. You are a handful,” he says with a chuckle, trying to coax some humor out of her.

She squeezes her eyes shut. “I should have you,” she says. “And you should have me.”

“I’m only a squire,” he reminds her. “I’m nothing, and you are a duchess.”

“You’re a finer man than any king,” she says firmly. “Better that you were king, in fact, and that your sons would be kings.”

“Then you should be a queen,” Richard tells her. “Any queen.”

“No,” she says, tightening her fingers on him. “Your queen, Richard. Yours.”

She feels him smile, and he pulls her closer, wrapping his arms more tightly around her.

“I would rather have nothing with you,” he says, “than a crown with anyone else.”

In that precise moment, Jacquetta sees something behind her eyes.

She sees a crown; a red rose; a white.

She sees a throne. Two thrones. Two golden bands. She feels it all with a shiver, with a strike, and though none of it is through a mirror, she knows it is a seeing, like any of the others she has had.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, shifting to look down at her, and then her eyes open, and she sees only Richard.

“I don’t know yet,” she says, and wishes for tomorrow.

And for tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

* * *

They’re going to take her from him.

She knows when she sees him coming to her—during the day, and not in the secrecy they’ve made for themselves under the cover of night—that he bears a grim piece of news. Her husband’s funeral has come and gone, and now it is time for her to go, too. She will return to her mother’s house, and then go to England. Richard will be gone from her. They’re going to take her from him.

Unless she does something first.

Unless she makes her destiny herself.

“Don’t say it,” she says, and takes his arm, nudging him into her rooms. By now this is nothing out of the ordinary. He attended to her when her husband was alive, too, though she feels that time was terribly wasted. Or she would, anyway, if she didn’t know with certainty now that ‘they’ should have no control over her. She was a girl of water and air; a pet belonging to a Duke.

Now she is a woman, and she will be beholden to no one but the fire inside her, and to Richard Woodville, her man of the earth.

She pulls him out of sight and kisses him, hard; with ownership. She kisses him in a way that tells the world (and him) that he is hers. That his worth is not measured by his blood or his name but by her love, and by his. He pulls dizzily away and stares at her.

“Jacquetta, the king, he commands that—”

“The king can command as he likes,” Jacquetta says brusquely. “You promised me an education, Richard, and it is incomplete. You also promised to earn me, and you can hardly do that from a distance.”

“I—” He stares at her. “It would take a lifetime, Jacquetta, to know all there is to know about you,” he says, bemused and pained. “And to earn you? It would take years, decades, not days—”

“Then I will have a lifetime,” she says, as his hands find a home on her waist again. “Would you deny me that, when you’ve already made me a promise?”  

He is a chivalrous knight. “I could refuse you nothing, Jacquetta, but—”

“But nothing.” She stands firm; as firm as he is; as firm as the earth. “I asked you to love me, Richard Woodville, and you swore that you would.”

He swallows hard. “But you would lose everything.”

“Nothing that matters,” she tells him boldly. Air and water. Fire and earth. These are the elements, and money is only money. She cannot carry her title into death. She cannot make magic out of an English king’s patents of nobility. “And you said you would rather have nothing with me than a crown with someone else, didn’t you?”

He can’t help laughing, even as he kisses her. He can’t help his joy, even in his fear. “Oh, we will never have a crown, Jacquetta. That much is for certain.”

He doesn’t know what she knows.

He doesn’t know, but he doesn’t have to.

She is sure enough for the both of them.

“Love me, Richard,” she says, wrapping her arms around his neck, “for a lifetime. Let the somewhere your love follows me be the somewhere at my side, forever. Will you?” she asks him, wondering if he can do it; if he can be the fool who runs away with her. His slate-grey eyes are fixed on hers, and she knows them now in so many forms, but will never know them fully enough. Not unless he says yes.

“I was always going to, Jacquetta,” he promises her. “For the rest of my life, I will love only you.”

Then he kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her; and she knows that soon, there will be a breath of ‘ _Stay, and oh, just once more_ ,’ but for once, there is no need to tell the future. There, out of sight, in a quiet moment while the sun is out, they will call it making love to her when Richard takes her in his arms, but by then, Jacquetta knows better.

He will make of her a fire, and it will burn until the day she dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jacquetta and Richard marry after she becomes pregnant with Elizabeth Woodville, who would one day be the wife of King Edward IV (Edward of York), thereby founding a line of kings and queens.


	4. Saint's Knees and Holy Appetites

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Margaret Beaufort, the sole heir to the Duke of Somerset, was the Lancastrian heir whose first married to Edmund Tudor, half-brother to King Henry VI, resulted in the birth of Henry Tudor, who would eventually become King Henry VII.

**Saint’s Knees and Holy Appetites**

_Book: The Red Queen_ _  
_ _Pairing: Margaret Beaufort x Jasper Tudor_

* * *

 **_I—Jasper Tudor_ ** **_  
_ ** _The Price_

She doesn’t actually know she loves him until well after he is gone, which is not the first unfortunate thing to happen in Margaret’s life. Not the second, either, or the third, so needless to say, it certainly isn’t the only unfortunate thing. Eventually, she’ll come to learn she may as well have fallen in love with the view of Jasper’s back as the look on his face. For the rest of their lives, that clever smile of a young man born to play a part would be far more fleeting than the gaping stretches of his absence.

Jasper is a man who is born to leave, Margaret thinks as he goes; he is made to travel far, like a pilgrim, like a saint—like the life she would have chosen for herself, if she had been free to choose.

She doesn’t know it will be so hard to part with him until after he is gone.

Well, that isn’t quite true, as she certainly suspected it would be difficult. She knew she trusted him, at the very least, and she has never trusted easily. She knew he listened to her, made her feel safe, like no one else ever has. She had come to his brother’s house when she was scarcely older than the baby she’s been trying desperately to raise, and she knows that while her husband Edmund was hard and cold and unfeeling, Jasper is patient and strong and kind.

More importantly, Jasper loves Margaret’s son as if Henry is his own, and perhaps he is. Henry is certainly more Jasper’s than Edmund’s. From time to time, Henry is even more Jasper’s than Margaret’s. Jasper vows to protect them both, as if Henry and Margaret could both belong to him, and perhaps they do. There has always been plenty of room; Jasper’s arms make a vast and comfortable home.

Still, Jasper goes, and Margaret stays.

Her second marriage to Henry Stafford is fine enough. He is old and uninterested in sex, so Margaret is free to (mostly) pursue the holy life she’s so long desired, which can never truly be granted to her. She will always belong to a man, whether it is this one or another, so there’s no point wishing for something better, or even for something else. Margaret’s birth is a prison; her blood makes her valuable, a prize to be bought, but her lack of male organs renders her powerless. Value and power aren’t the same, she reminds herself. Someday, she swears she will have both.

After Jasper is gone, Margaret thinks of him in a way she hadn’t before. Her husband Henry doesn’t touch her, thankfully, but there are some desperate times when she wishes she could take hold of his hand and place it indiscreetly where she is aching with thoughts of Jasper. Holiness is notoriously difficult, she knows, so she assumes it is a test. God is testing her when he fills her mind with the shape of Jasper’s mouth and the motion of its promises. He is testing her when she has glimpses from her memory of Jasper dressed in armor, fighting for his birthright; fighting for her son; _fighting_ , which Henry Stafford never does, whether for Margaret or for anyone. So Margaret imagines a life where Jasper is in bed beside her; where he turns to her and takes her in his arms.

Needless to say, during these times she spends exceptionally long hours in prayer.

Eventually, though, times are challenging in ways that aren’t limited to her imaginings. She has passed her valuable blood onto her son—who isn’t powerful yet, but who will be, God willing (and for Margaret, He always is)—and with value always comes danger. With treasure always comes would-be thieves. So, as the Yorks and Lancasters continue to fight for the throne, Margaret’s only thought is of her son Henry, and her husband Henry Stafford joins her in a rush to Pembroke to make sure her baby boy, her ticket to greatness, is safe.

Unfortunately, Margaret’s son doesn’t know her. Doesn’t recognize her. For a time it’s almost a blessing that this is what’s troubling her mind, for once, until she comes across Jasper in Pembroke Tower.

Where she is alone.

With _Jasper_.

“Jasper,” she whispers, hardly believing it’s him, and in three long strides he has her in his arms, holding her so tightly she cannot breathe and does not care. She pulls back to look at him, and he (he hasn’t spoken yet and he can’t, he won’t) lowers his mouth to hers and kisses her. It is the first true kiss Margaret has ever known, and it is comfort and piercing desire both, like him. Jasper wraps his arms around her and Margaret half-sinks against his chest, her fingers digging into the broadness of his back.

“I’ve been praying for you,” she whispers to him, and Jasper chuckles into her mouth.

“Then I suppose you must have the knees of a saint by now, Margaret,” he says, and it sends a riotous shiver up her spine. He laughs again, and she should push him away, she knows, but since she has seen him go, every vacancy in her soul has been filled with nothing but him.

Surely God has meant for her to love Jasper. Why else fill her mind so distractingly with thoughts of him? With this… this _fire_ , which is only for him?

“Margaret,” Jasper says, and she pulls him closer, fidgeting with his clothes. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she knows he does. He blinks for a moment and then hurries to help her, pausing to press his shaking hands into her waist.

“Margaret, your husband—”

“Barren,” she whispers, kissing him again.

“Margaret,” he growls. “ _I_ am not barren—”

Wildly, she thinks for a moment that having Jasper’s child would be a miracle. It would save her from a life of desperation, and besides, her husband is so very old. It would be God’s will, she thinks. This, like all things, is only God’s will.

“If you love me, Jasper, then have me,” Margaret says to him. “You are not like Henry Stafford. You, Jasper Tudor, are a man born to take what is his. You are blessed because you make your own destiny.”

His eyes widen, and then his fingers tighten on her waist.

“I cannot promise to be gentle,” he says. “I have wanted you a long time, Margaret.”

She wants to laugh at this; at the idea that she is somehow breakable. Does she really seem like she is soft, or fragile?

“Take what you want, Jasper Tudor,” Margaret whispers, tugging at his hose, “or I will.”

He shoves her back and lifts her. She yanks up her skirts and wraps her legs around his hips, and she feels no guilt, no shame. Jasper is more her husband than Henry Stafford, anyway. Jasper belongs to her as no one else has ever belonged to anyone. She thinks of this when he circles the lips of her cunt with his fingers, saturating them in the wetness of her desire, which she knows is all for him. Only for him.

When he slides into her, shoving her back and up, she tightens her hands in his hair. It’s crude, really, and not very pretty, but she feels powerful like this, lofted off the ground and held so tightly in Jasper’s arms. She can look down at him and see his face, and it is like a man seeing God. It is like seeing rapture, and it is all because of her. She is bringing Jasper Tudor to beatitude, to ecstasy, and it is the most power she has ever felt—and if she did not know she loved Jasper before, she knows she loves him now. She knows she loves this, with him, now.

Then, for a moment, something shifts. She gasps, and Jasper, realizing something is happening, pounds harder into her. Whatever it is he’s done—whatever piece of her he’s awoken—it grows, it festers, it spreads its tendrils in something of a twisted agony throughout her limbs, and then it shatters and Margaret cries out, Jasper’s hand rising swiftly to cover her mouth and capture the sound of her pleasure.

When it passes, Margaret bites down on his fingers and Jasper swears loudly, letting his head fall back. She draws a nail along his throat, digging her fingers in briefly, and thinks how she could ruin him like this. How easy it would be, she thinks, and how pliable he is in her hands. Jasper Tudor looks at her like he would melt down to nothing for her, and she loves him, but she loves doing this to him, too.

She watches him while he convulses, choking out her name, and as he gradually lowers her to her feet, she strokes his hair, brushing her lips softly against his temple, a saint and a sinner both.

“Margaret,” he rasps against her neck, “you are my only love.”

“And you are mine,” she says, sunspots of gold before her eyes. “You, Jasper Tudor, and my son Henry, and God Himself.”

* * *

 **_II—Edward of York  
_ ** _The Thief_

Her husband Henry Stafford is a coward who drags her to the York court. She resents him for it—for his eagerness to play an insipid part to an unworthy usurper—despite his marriage to her, the heir of Lancaster.

“Don’t let them persuade you that York is the true king,” Jasper tells her before he leaves again, kissing her swiftly, as if such a persuasion could ever be possible. “Bow your knee and bend your head and smile, but know always that Lancaster is the royal house, and we have an heir to the throne.”

We, because Margaret and Jasper have Henry.

We, because she is as good as his.

She kisses him goodbye and watches his back, ready to guard her own.

And then, inevitably, she arrives at court, and this is where she first sees Edward of York.

The man who calls himself King Edward IV is magnificent, a golden prince; a conqueror down to every line of muscle. Margaret has known strong men, and she has known handsome men, but Edward takes even her sinless breath away, if only for a moment. She sees Edward but also sees through him, sees _past_ him, to the victories that have been lain at his feet. He is a battle-tested king. Perhaps he doesn’t deserve his crown, but if kingship were a matter of strength and vigor rather than blood and the will of the Almighty, then the throne he holds would have been made for him. If the crown were something to be won by brute strength, then yes, Margaret concedes: Edward of York would be king.

But he isn’t, she reminds herself. Not really. She plots against him as often as she can. He, meanwhile, ignores her, his gaze sweeping over her to other women—to his wife, beauty that she is, but to many others, too—and the more he ignores her, the more she prays for his downfall. Royalty is not for the strong, Margaret tells herself, it is for the blessed.

It is for the _blessed_ , like herself and her son, and Edward may as well be vice itself.

Briefly, Jasper returns in secret to muster his men, and hardly a word passes between them when he takes Margaret with desperation on the table in the cellar. It’s never beds for them, and Margaret likes it that way. Prefers it. Jasper slides her dress up and bites at her thigh and she thinks, Edward would fuck me like this.

Edward would take me, she thinks. He would fill me in one thrust and hold my hands down, keeping me still. He would wrap one of his conquering hands around my throat and keep his eyes on mine. He would delight in the fear in my eyes—for a moment—but then he would find me a match for his power. For a moment, I would let him think he ruled me, but then I would curl my hands around his balls and watch him stiffen, eyes wide, and tell him he belonged to me. And Edward would say, his voice strained and tested, that he concedes to my authority, and that Lancaster is the true line, and I am the true queen.

This is what Margaret thinks while Jasper makes love to her, and when she comes this time it’s like a dagger to her belly, ripping up out of her throat. But then Jasper is Jasper again, and she kisses him for love instead of fantasy, and when she next sees Edward of York, she smiles a little to herself.

Edward’s eyes meet hers, and her mouth twitches.

He knows, she thinks.

He knows he would never be able to conquer her.

* * *

 **_III—Elizabeth Woodville  
_ ** _The Queen_

As with Edward, Margaret hates Elizabeth as much as she loves her. In fact, is it really love? It’s something more like respect, only tinged in no small way (God forgive her, though she knows He does) with envy. Or perhaps it is envy obscured by respect. Either way, Elizabeth is beautiful in a way Margaret will never be, which Margaret realizes is a power of its own. Elizabeth is nothing, a commoner who caught a king’s eye on the road, but eventually Margaret realizes: that was no airy daydream. No lover’s fortune. No charm of fate. The longer Margaret serves Elizabeth Woodville’s court, the more she knows for certain Elizabeth was not standing by that road by accident. Margaret has valuable blood, true enough, but Elizabeth has _that face,_ and she knows it. Elizabeth knew the king would be helpless but to stop, if only just to look at her, and she gambled on it and won.

Elizabeth knows her own worth better than any man at court, and Margaret can’t help fascination with her for that, tainted with hatred or not.

Margaret loathes Elizabeth most when Henry Stafford dies, and Margaret is forced to find a new husband. It can’t be Jasper, unfortunately. Jasper’s life is meant to be on the run. He’s meant to disappear, not to stay. His love, like his standing in court, has peaks and valleys, rises and falls. Margaret doesn’t resent him for it, but she does hate that Edward is not available as a choice. It isn’t about his looks, of course, because Margaret does not cling foolishly to vanity, but what a pair they would have made if Edward were available to wed. The York boy with the Lancaster heiress? If not for Elizabeth, Edward would make both their fortunes, so Margaret hates her most for that.

That, and other things Elizabeth makes her feel.

Unfortunately there is no getting around Elizabeth. Not in Margaret’s marriage, nor in her daily life. She attends to Elizabeth, the White Queen who holds what could be Margaret’s, and to Elizabeth’s many children. Elizabeth’s _many_ children. Edward, born to be king, was clearly also born to father princes. Elizabeth is beloved, and it stabs at Margaret’s heart to watch a woman so fertile bedding a man so virile their union constantly results in more heirs, pushing her own son Henry Tudor from the throne.

“I am getting fat,” Elizabeth laments when she rises from her bath, staring down at her body. This is ridiculous, of course, Margaret thinks, and worse, it’s sinful, but more importantly, it’s wrong.

“No, you aren’t,” Margaret says, wrapping a linen around Elizabeth. “And your husband loves you, so what does it matter? He will come to you this very night, surely, and the new baby was only just born.”

“Still. I’m not the girl I was,” Elizabeth laments, and for a moment, Margaret knows Elizabeth is thinking of the day she decided to lure the king. For a moment, Margaret knows Elizabeth’s secret: that on that day those many years ago, Elizabeth knew she was so beautiful even a man who had stolen his crown would make a legitimate purchase of her.

“No, you aren’t the girl you were,” Margaret agrees curtly, and Elizabeth lowers her grey gaze to Margaret’s, pale brow arched in warning. “You’re a woman, Elizabeth,” Margaret reminds her. “And a woman who should never discount the power in what she is.”

And then, because something in her bones tells her she should, Margaret’s fingers brush Elizabeth’s naked thigh.

Elizabeth jumps, startled, but whatever has moved through Margaret, it isn’t yet ready to stop. Margaret is a woman guided by the workings of God in her heart and her mind, and when Elizabeth doesn’t step away, Margaret slides her hand flat around the curve of Elizabeth’s beautiful backside, which is full and soft and so unlike the battle-hardened lines of Jasper.

“Margaret,” Elizabeth half-whimpers in unconvincing opposition, and Margaret shakes her head.

“Your husband will never tire of you,” Margaret says, and she knows that much is true. She wouldn’t, after all. She nudges Elizabeth backwards against the tub of now-cold water and Elizabeth hisses at the contact with metal that touches her back.

Margaret bends down and parts Elizabeth’s thighs, stroking between them. Elizabeth is wet, and not from the bath. The moisture is intriguing, and Margaret’s motions continue, more curious than anything else. Elizabeth, whose chin never drops and whose posture never falters, quivers slightly, clearly halfway between telling Margaret to leave and begging her never to stop, and Margaret realizes this is power, too.

This is power over a woman who knows her value, but not herself.

Margaret strokes Elizabeth’s cunt, faster and faster, until the other woman chokes out a cry, her long golden hair falling in damp waves around the both of them. And when they’re done, Margaret eyes her fingers with a sense of newness, knowing that in bringing Elizabeth to climax, she has won something for herself. Elizabeth cannot truly stand against Margaret after this. Not now. Perhaps not ever. The rest of forever is altered because in the moment Elizabeth was weak, she permitted herself to take pleasure at Margaret’s hands.

For a moment they are frozen, and then Elizabeth coldly shoves Margaret away.

“Your Queen thanks you for your service,” she says, as if by pleasuring her, Margaret has somehow lowered herself, and then Elizabeth walks naked through her chambers for her shift. It is a show, and Elizabeth is a faultless performer. Every motion provides the same undeniable message: her body is perfect. Her face is perfect. She has born a king princes and princesses enough to fill a royal nursery. She is married to a man who has never lost in battle. She is, herself, a woman who will never lose. She is Queen, and whatever else Margaret has done for her— _to_ her—in this room, Margaret will still have to bow to her outside it.

And in that moment, Margaret realizes that what she feels for Elizabeth is envy, and it is hatred, but it is also love—a _terrible_ love. Elizabeth is every inch a woman worth threatening a crown for, so it’s love, but a disastrous one.

Because for Margaret to rise, Elizabeth will have to fall, and Margaret does not love Elizabeth enough to stop it.

* * *

 **_IV—Thomas Stanley_ ** **_  
_ ** _The Serpent_

For years—for decades—she doesn’t even see Jasper. She barely hears from him. Eventually, Margaret chooses Thomas Stanley not because he is loyal, but because he is not. She needs a snake. She has a lion in Jasper, but to bring down her enemy in Elizabeth, she needs someone who can swallow the dowager queen in one bite.

It doesn’t hurt that Stanley is charming; that’s how he lures his enemies to safety. Margaret learns quickly enough that aligning with a snake means a chance at poison herself, and when Stanley betrays her—ruthlessly, while smiling through his teeth—she can’t even be angry. She knew what he was when she chose him, and absurdly, she finds herself satisfied he didn’t let her down.

Still, Margaret has always known openings when she sees them, and when her son Henry is about to fight Richard (truly, she thinks, if Edward was a usurper, then surely his brother Richard can only be a monster or an idiot) she comes to Stanley to beg. Power is not just power, she tells herself, trying to soothe her injured pride.

True power is knowing when to put it aside to gain what one truly desires.

“Please,” she says to Stanley, and yes, she is pleading. She kneels before Stanley and begs, looking up at him. Let him think he is the one with power. Let him think her small. Let him have pity on her, and let him be the fool who doesn’t know when a viper lies in his midst.

“Thomas,” she murmurs, and reaches up, drawing her hand slowly over the fabric of his trousers.

She stares at the growing bulge of his erection as if she’s never seen anything so magnificent. In truth, it’s not unimpressive. She licks her lips, bites them, stares longingly at the outline of his cock, and it is only half pretense. Her mouth waters for him, because he tricked her. Because he was clever enough to trick her, and no man has ever done that before.

Stanley yanks her up and throws her down on the makeshift cot, fumbling. It is always a fumble, she thinks, but she groans with anticipation that is real enough. She would have done this if he were ugly. She would have done this if he were fat, if he stirred nothing in her but loathing. But it helps that he is handsome, that he is hard and wanting, and it is certainly not the most unfortunate event in Margaret Beaufort’s life that she is wanting, too.

Still, she won’t give it to him until she has what she wants. “Please, Thomas,” she whispers, and keens under his touch, latching her hand around the back of his neck. “Please, Thomas, will you help me?” she whimpers. “Henry needs you. He _needs_ you, Thomas, and I—”

She punctuates the most important statement with a moan that drives Stanley half to madness and then she lifts her head, placing her lips beside his ear.

“I need you,” she whispers, and he’s done for. She can feel the change in the wind the moment he weakens under her touch.

“Margaret,” he grits out, shoving his trousers down and her skirts up, “this changes nothing.”

Of course not, she wants to laugh. You were always going to give me what I wanted.

But she makes the sounds, the ones that leave Jasper putty in her hands. She says things like _My Lord, my love, my God, how good you feel_ , and he says things like _Margaret who knew you could feel so good_ , and she laughs and thinks _you_ should have known, you stupid fool. You stupid, stupid fool, I am the best thing you will ever touch, and when we’re done here, you will burn for me for the rest of your life.

He isn’t untalented, which is always the truest thing to be said about Thomas Stanley. Margaret comes, though she would have opted for pretense if she had not. He rides her with urgency but without haste, and for a moment, she almost enjoys it. She thinks maybe she’ll let him fuck her again if she wants it, maybe, but not now. Right now she has a war to win, and when Thomas Stanley collapses against her, sated, she knows she has nearly won it.

The rest is up to him, and to Henry.

When they part, she kisses Stanley; a rarity. She blesses him as her husband. She thinks maybe they will have a future together after all, and then he goes, and she is certain (he hasn’t said as much, and he won’t, but still, she knows and God knows) that he will fight for her son. She has won Thomas Stanley’s alliance in this, and perhaps more, but then as she makes her way from his tent, half-smiling to herself, she sees a familiar face.

She sees the love of her life.

And beside him, she sees Jasper Tudor.

* * *

 **_V—Henry Tudor_ ** **_  
_ ** _The Stranger_

She knew the moment she set eyes on her infant son that he would be her future, her gift from God. Her ticket to everything she could ever want, and had ever wanted. She would only have to be patient. To guide him. To protect him, at all costs. To love him as she had never loved anyone, and to put him before all things. She has done everything, all of this, for him, the love of her life.

And he is essentially a stranger.

Henry doesn’t recognize her. He barely knows her. He has Tudor features and almost nothing of her. He looks tired, exhausted. He looks like a person on the brink of collapse.

Margaret sees nothing of herself in him. She has seen more strength in Princess Elizabeth of York, her son’s future wife and the daughter of her enemy Elizabeth, than in the boy—the _man_ —who stands before her, who is her own flesh and blood. This is the king Margaret Beaufort has made for England, and she loves him enough to lie down and die for him, if that’s what it takes—but she thinks perhaps if she’d had a hand in raising him, he would not be looking so defeated now.

“You are anointed by God,” she tells her son, as she has told him every opportunity she can. “You are chosen, Henry, to be King. You will not lose. You have my blood,” she says, and thinks perhaps he has discounted this for too long. Jasper will have spoken to Henry of Edmund, but not of her. It’s no fashionable thing to claim a mother’s fierceness. But now, finally, looking at her, Margaret can see that Henry understands what she is. What she’s made of. He knows that she will never break, and never falter. That she is value and power both, and she is sacrifice, too, and this is what runs in his blood. Not Tudor.

Lancaster.

 _Margaret_.

“You have my blood and God’s favor,” Margaret tells her son, “and you will not lose.”

Henry nods, lifted slightly, and prepares himself for battle.

Then Margaret looks up and finds Jasper, who is staring at her with a question. Several questions. None of which she will answer right now. He cannot possibly know all that she has done for her son.

But she will tell him, just to see the look on his face, while he fucks her tonight.

“Go,” she says beatifically, “and go with God.”

Tonight, she knows, Jasper Tudor will make love in secret to Margaret Regina; Margaret, the King’s Mother.

And this time, unlike the others, she won’t let him rest until she herself is wholly satisfied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Margaret was a notoriously holy woman, and thus everything in this one shot is 1000% true and historically accurate. Happy birthday, Aurora!


	5. Kings and Queens and Vagabonds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anthony Woodville is the son of Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers, and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, and he is the brother of Elizabeth Woodville, later the wife and queen of Edward IV. Anthony is born Lancastrian, but after his sister's marriage to King Edward, he becomes steadfastly loyal to York. 
> 
> Also, the name Anthony was pronounced 'Antony' (no H) at this time in England.

**Kings and Queens and Vagabonds**

_Book: The White Queen_ _  
_ _Pairing: Anthony Woodville x Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville x Edward IV_

* * *

_(Now)_

He is most beautiful in the glow of night, that conquering son of York. He is a sun, a rose, a sword—whatever pleases the poets most on any given day. He turns and smiles and Anthony is lost to memories of countless moments like this one, cloistered here with him in the sanctity of collaboration. Anthony is trusted here; respected.

Here, in Edward’s private space, Anthony is home.

“Edward,” Anthony says quietly, and knows Edward can hear his voice change. They know each other well enough by now to know when something’s wrong. “I have to leave. I have to go.” He swallows hard. “I can’t stay.”

“Anthony.” Something in Edward’s voice catches. “You would leave me?”

“You don’t need me,” Anthony reminds him. “You have my father, my brothers. _Your_ brothers.”

“I never have more than half of George,” Edward scoffs, “and sometimes I fear I lose pieces of Richard, too. If you go, Anthony, then how will I—”

“You will.” Anthony steps forward. “You will be fine without me, Your Grace.”

The truth is it’s Anthony who isn’t fine. Edward, who isn’t accustomed to being refused, tries to coax him with humor.

“Come now, Anthony, we’ve only narrowly avoided war with France,” Edward beckons, voice light as he invites Anthony in on the joke. “I thought you would have to stay to keep me out of trouble. You’re so good at it.”

“I’m not, actually,” Anthony sighs. “You never listen to me.”

“That’s not true,” Edward says, but he’s laughing. The look in his eyes, the smile on his mouth, it’s terrible. This is Edward at his truest, at his most comfortable, and at his most undeniable. He is a genius on the battlefield, but this is when he is most himself; when he is happy, and smiling, and with Anthony. “I am only difficult because otherwise, if I did everything I was told, how could I be sure you noticed me?”

“Edward.” Anthony takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Edward, I have to leave. I have to leave England.”

Edward’s easy smile falters slightly. “England, Anthony?” he asks. “Or me?”

“I—” It’s unbearable. “I have to go, Edward. I’m taking a pilgrimage to Rome. I’ll be back,” he adds, “but I need some time to… to clear my head. To regain control of my thoughts.”

To forget you, Anthony doesn’t say, if only for a single moment. I would chase a single breath of clarity if it meant for one second, I would not drown in thoughts of you.

“Anthony,” Edward says, and Anthony goes rigid as he steps closer, golden York curls dusting his forehead as the smile falls away. “I will not know how to be without you. I’ll hardly know who I am without you here.”

“Not true,” Anthony says, swallowing. “You’re a York, Edward. You’re one of the three sons of York. You have your brothers, you have my sister, you have that Elizabeth Shore woman—”

“Elizabeth Shore,” Edward echoes, suddenly pausing in place. “Anthony, you think I’m…”

He trails off, and Anthony stares rigidly at his feet.

It was one thing when it was Elizabeth. It was one thing when it was Anthony’s own sister, Edward’s wife, the great love of Edward’s life; the woman for whom he defied a king’s duty. But to know that not even Elizabeth can keep his affections…

Anthony can no longer bear it.

“Anthony,” Edward says softly. “Look at me.”

It’s not a king’s command, so Anthony refuses.

“Anthony,” Edward sighs, and takes a step forward, vaulting Anthony’s chin up with one sturdy hand. “You think Shore means something to me? She’s a warm body on a cold night. She kept my hands busy while your sister was in confinement, that’s all. I’m not with her now,” he adds pointedly, and shifts his thumb, tracing it gloriously over the air around Anthony’s mouth. “Am I?”

They haven’t touched yet.

They haven’t touched, and they won’t.

They shouldn’t.

Anthony regains his breath and steps back; steps away; puts distance between them.

“I’ll be back,” Anthony promises, and Edward steps after him, about to speak, but Anthony crosses to the door, pausing in the threshold.

“You will hardly think of me once I’m gone,” Anthony tells him.

“You underestimate me,” is Edward’s low reply.

Never, Anthony doesn’t say. I have never underestimated you; I have always thought the impossible when it comes to you, and this is why I’m leaving.

“Come back to me, Anthony,” Edward says before he goes.

“Is that a command from my king?” Anthony asks.

“You may not reject it,” Edward replies, mouth twitching at the corners, “but no. It’s a personal request.”

Anthony prays the distance does him good.

But even as he exits, he knows that any request for relief, even from a thousand hard-fought miles, is still asking far too much.

* * *

_(Before)_

There is something of a hardened softness to being the eldest surviving son. It’s a privilege to be the inheritor; to be the face of an inheritance that will persist beyond a name, a family, a line of blood. To be below an eldest son is to be forever in a shadow. To _be_ the eldest son—the survivor, at that—is carry the weight of a legacy upon one’s shoulders.

Anthony doesn’t know when he first sees Edward of York that the golden, stubborn boy with too much pride and too little sense will one day upend the sovereignty of an entire country. He doesn’t think, upon first seeing the man who will one day shed the blood of Anthony’s own kinsmen, that he is meeting the king who will hold all of their destinies in one arrogant, tight-fisted hand. Because he does not know these things (nor see the future, as his mother can), for a moment, Anthony thinks they are equals, in a way: he is the future Earl of Rivers, as equally as Edward is the Earl of March.

But then Edward meets Anthony’s eye, and Anthony knows with clanging certainty they are not the same. Whatever Edward is made of, it is tougher, somehow. Louder, brighter, like the sun itself. Anthony can see, even as a boy, that Edward of York is made for greatness in a way Anthony is not, and it isn’t his blood, and it isn’t his name, and it isn’t his stars. There is something in the very fiber of what Edward is that will put him out of Anthony’s reach forever.

Which is why Anthony Woodville decides right away it is best if he hates Edward of York. His mother would advise against it (she’s too wise for the trivialities of men and their blood feuds, being the fish-goddess that she is) but Anthony thinks that for once, she can’t see what he sees. She can’t see what Edward of York does when he fixes his too-firm gaze on Anthony’s. She thinks what runs between them is rivalry, but it’s more than that.

It’s something Anthony can feel somewhere in his bones he will spend his whole life fighting.

* * *

They first meet when they are boys. They meet again over bodies, wading through blood, when they are men. This latest time they meet, Edward is king, and he is looking at Anthony’s sister Elizabeth like she is a prize to which he feels entitled. In a strange way, it comforts Anthony that everything he has assumed about Edward is true by the look in his keen York eyes, and Anthony doesn’t hesitate to warn Elizabeth away.

“Be careful with him,” Anthony says, taking Elizabeth’s arm. She is the eldest and a widow, hardly naive to the ways of the world, but still, Anthony is the eldest son. He is the one who will carry the Rivers legacy, the name of their proud father’s house, while her children will bear only the name she weds. He is the caretaker of their line, not Elizabeth.

“He has bedded and left many women, Elizabeth,” Anthony says, and it isn’t cruelty. It is fact. “You need not be one of them.”

“Oh, stop, Anthony,” she says, fixing him with her lovely grey gaze. She is a beautiful woman; beautiful enough it’s no surprise to Anthony that Edward’s attention lands on her. “I’m merely requesting what is mine. He’s king now, and if my boys are to have their inheritance, I will have to go through him.”

But Anthony can see what alights in her eyes when she looks at Edward. Anthony feels the warning stirring in his veins, because he knows what it is to be in the presence of the steadily rising Earl of March.

Edward is a man destined for greatness, and to be near him is to chance the injury of a spark.

“Just be careful,” Anthony says again, but Elizabeth is no longer listening. Perhaps she is already thinking of Edward’s hands. Anthony imagines she can only do such a thing because she hasn’t seen those hands wielding a sword. Elizabeth doesn’t know the volumes of blood of that have been spilled for Edward; the blades that have taken aim for him; the men who have fought to destroy him, and who have found themselves cut down by him instead.

Edward is not gentle, Anthony wants to tell her, and he’s not a lover; he’s not a fragile poet or some storied prince. He’s a hardened man who won his throne by right of violence, by the sanctity of being the better arm, and Elizabeth cannot know it makes him more than the graceful finery she thinks of as nobility. It makes Edward so much more than anything Elizabeth can ever understand.

But Anthony has seen Edward leave broken bodies behind him, and knows he is—like all kings—part monster and part man, and so Anthony clings hopelessly to his hatred. To his loathing, and to his mistrust, because he cannot glorify a man like that. He knows he will either hate Edward or he will worship him, and so Anthony clings to the sharp edges of his wrath; to the shadows of loathing that curl around him, keeping him safely at a distance.

* * *

When he sees Edward leaving the hunting lodge on their father’s lands ( _his_ lands, someday), Anthony is struck violent with silence. He finds words, though, when he takes hold of his sister, spitting malice in her face.

Things he says: _You’re a whore, he’s a lecher, you will be disgraced, you are both traitors to your lines._

Things he doesn’t say: _Does he taste like molten gold, sister, or is it only in my imagination?_

He doesn’t know who is more foolish between himself and his sister. He knows, though, that she is far luckier.

Elizabeth touched the flame of Edward of York and did not drift to ash.

* * *

It’s Anthony who catches Edward’s eye before he admits the truth. Warwick is red-faced with rage and everyone knows something is coming, but it’s Anthony who is the true subject of Edward’s confession.

“I have married Elizabeth Woodville,” Edward says, and Anthony can hear the tentative note in his voice; the indication that as the eldest son, Edward knows he has betrayed his duty to his house. He married for love. He has always been a man who takes what he wants, and this time, what he wanted was a woman born low beneath him. He won the crown by force and now he has snatched his right to happiness, too, and somehow, Anthony wonders if Edward is asking his forgiveness. Perhaps it’s his imagination, but Anthony nods anyway, as if to say, _You have earned this, whether anyone likes it or not. You are the greatest man in England, and you have won for yourself the right to rule all things. Even yourself. Especially yourself._

Edward blinks, and then nods.

“I am honored,” Edward says, “to have the loyalty of the Rivers family.”

This isn’t quite true yet, Anthony thinks to say, but there would be no use fighting it. This is his sister’s husband, after all. This is the rightful king. This is _Edward_ , so Anthony sinks into a bow. He has always known he will either hate Edward or worship him, and the tides of his heart are already beginning to turn.

* * *

 It is easy, _so_ easy, for Anthony to find Edward worthy of his loyalty. Even while standing on opposing sides, there is something in Anthony that has always wanted Edward to look approvingly at him. It’s not very difficult to see Edward is a fairer king, a stronger king than Henry, and to Anthony’s surprise, it isn’t very difficult to admit those things aloud.

Better still, Edward rewards him for his loyalty. Anthony has Edward’s ear the way he would never have had the ear of a Lancastrian noble, much less the king of its house. Anthony was nothing as a son of Lancaster, but as a brother of York, he has Edward’s attention.

Anthony has Edward’s attention, and that is no small thing.

Over the years, Anthony grows in favor, as does the rest of his family. Even at cost to Edward’s reign, to the dismay of his brothers George and Richard, Edward rewards the Rivers’ line. He approves the marriages Elizabeth requests. He makes Anthony a Knight of the Garter. Anthony is a favored piece of Edward’s court and Edward, who dotes on his wife, is kind to the rest of her family. He pulls Anthony into his confidence, beckons him for his thoughts. For years, Anthony assumes Edward is doing all of this to please Elizabeth, who is the most beautiful queen on Edward’s arm. Together, they light up the most glorious court in Christendom.

It is only when Edward looks to Anthony first in meetings that Anthony realizes this is not about Elizabeth at all. Perhaps it was at one point, but now Edward’s gaze has become accustomed to falling on Anthony’s. Somehow, trust in Anthony has become one of the King of England’s reflexive reactions, like muscle memory. Once Edward is betrayed by his brother George, he does it even more frequently. He looks to Anthony like a beacon, like a promise of stability. Edward seeks out Anthony for certainty. For fraternity. For comfort.

Anthony, who is in a loveless marriage with a barren (but wealthy) woman far his senior, finds he easily does the same. He spends hours with Edward, talking about this and that and all of it, until both men are tired and sated by conversation. Anthony is beloved by Edward’s court, a tournament champion and a favored poet, but nobody knows Anthony takes both his favor and his muse from the same unending vault of inspiration.

It is all, all of it, for Edward.

* * *

When does it become something more? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s only Anthony’s imagination when he thinks Edward’s gaze lingers on him a bit too long. Maybe it means nothing that Edward develops a habit of seeking him out in a crowd. Maybe the way they look at each other when they’re alone—warmly, and with the tenderness of secrets—is nothing worth remarking.

Oh, his heart insists, but it is.

The circumstances of politics aren’t always serene; there is more to ruling a country than plotting with advisors and nobles, and Anthony fights at Edward’s side relentlessly. It is no peaceful thing, this war between cousins. There is turmoil in their blood, and Anthony only leaves Edward’s side to go to Elizabeth’s; to keep his mother and his sister safe; to keep Edward’s England safe.

Edward’s wife. Edward’s city. Edward’s legacy. Anthony fights for all of it, whether Edward asks him to or not.

When Edward is gone, forced into exile by Warwick’s relentless schemes, Anthony is both focused and blinded. He no longer sees danger to himself; he only sees the cost to Edward. He sees a land vacant of its greatest king and does not rest until Edward is back, riding under the York colors again with his head held high.

But while Anthony and Edward fight, war gets under Elizabeth’s skin and latches on. She tires of hiding; she doesn’t understand the brutalities of men. She wants her husband home, as any wife would, but she only wants the lover in him, the counselor, the king who is righteous and good. Edward is righteous and good, yes, but he is also justice. He is swift and ruthless. He could personify death itself with how talented he is at war, and though Anthony holds his tongue when Elizabeth laments the loss of goodness in Edward’s reign, he thinks again how little she understands all the many pieces of him. Did she really think goodness ever prevailed in this war between families? That _goodness_ put Edward of York on the throne? That was not goodness. It wasn’t God.

It was Edward.

Maybe part of it was Warwick, Anthony concedes, but Warwick still could have only done it with Edward. George is proof of that, isn’t he? When Warwick fails with Edward’s own brother, the world knows it to be true: Edward is not simply a York petitioner with a valid claim. He is not just a head on which to place a crown. Edward is a man who was meant from his first breath to be king, and Anthony is sure Edward can see that belief on his face when he falls to his knees, welcoming Edward back again.

“Anthony,” Edward says, and though there is excitement in his eyes at finding Anthony here—in the privy chamber which once again bears the white York rose—Anthony can see the weariness in Edward’s bones. Edward has fought for his throne every day since he earned it, and the strain of keeping it weighs on him. “Anthony, get up.”

Anthony rises and Edward’s arms come around him, strong and inescapable.

“Edward,” Anthony says to him softly, “you’re home.”

He feels Edward swallow; feels Edward’s arms tighten around him. Elizabeth may turn Edward away for what he has to do now, for the men he still has to dispatch to keep his throne safe, and Anthony can feel the conflict in all of Edward’s limbs at what will happen next.

For a moment, Anthony feels a lurch of resentment for Elizabeth; the sort of thing he tries so hard to prevent, and which he only feels on Edward’s account and not his own. Elizabeth is his dearest sister—he loves her, dearly, and would take nothing from her—but she takes from him, today, in her reproach of Edward. She will never understand what Edward has done for her, for them, for the country he loves so dearly, but Anthony will. Anthony does.

“I am home,” Edward whispers raggedly, and that’s when Anthony is sure it is something more.

* * *

Elizabeth is the wife of a king who has never been beaten in battle, and yet for a time, she envies Anthony for Edward’s attention. Strangely, Anthony does feel guilt. He knows something is different now. He knows Edward’s attention drifts from time to time while Elizabeth talks, and when it does, his gaze falls on Anthony’s. Nothing has happened, Anthony reminds himself; nothing for which to feel shame, but still, he does. Oh, he does, and Edward is certainly not helping.

“You will never leave me, will you, Anthony?” Edward asks, still a boy betrayed by his brothers; by his own unsettled blood, which would so easily destroy itself. Edward is drunk, a little, and so is Anthony, a lot, and Edward could have one of the many waiting girls in his lap now—could touch her, could fuck her right here and nobody would say a word against the undisputed King of England—but instead he sends them out, falling on his side next to Anthony, who lies delirious on the floor.

“Tell me, Anthony,” Edward says, reaching out to run his fingers over Anthony’s mouth, “that you will never leave me.”

Anthony is breathless. “I will never willingly leave you, Edward,” he says, and Edward laughs.

“Ah, but aren’t we done with politics?” he asks, sweeping a hand around the empty room. “There is no one here, Anthony. No one you have to please. You Rivers, you are so careful, always looking around for your enemies, never saying things you can’t take back. But I want you to promise me, Anthony.” His gaze is steady on Anthony’s, even as the room continues to spin. “I want you to swear to me here and now,” Edward whispers, “that you will never leave me.”

Anthony exhales the impossible. “I will never leave you, Edward.”

“Because you love me,” Edward prompts.

Anthony swallows hard. “Because I love you.”

“Because you love me,” Edward repeats, his mouth quirking up in a smile, “as I love you.”

Anthony shuts his eyes, blissful.

Elizabeth is the wife of a king who has never been beaten in battle.

But it is Anthony who belongs to him.

* * *

Still, it is sickening after a while, this love. It’s a poison. Edward and Anthony cannot keep away from each other, but neither can Edward keep away from his other vices. Edward is not a perfect man, Anthony reminds himself, and hates that he, like Elizabeth, has come to be so blindly in love with little slivers of Edward and not his encompassing whole. Elizabeth has loved the romantic in Edward, the man who rescued her from poverty and loneliness. Anthony has loved the conqueror, the scholar, the King. But neither of them have much affection for the squanderer; the man who wastes both their love.

“I have to go,” Anthony tells Elizabeth. She is suffering, too. The latest girl, Elizabeth Shore, is young and pretty, true enough, but she is not Anthony’s sister. She is no steadfast, unyielding Queen Elizabeth, and neither is she Edward’s loyal knight. She is as undeserving as anything; as anyone. For once, Anthony can no longer stomach his envy, and it makes him less a poet than it does a fool. “I have to get away from here.”

Elizabeth thinks he is speaking of Edward’s treaty with France, and Anthony doesn’t correct her.

“You’ll come back to me,” she murmurs, “won’t you?”

“Of course,” he says. “To you, and to Edward. You are my sovereigns. You rule my loyalty and my heart.”

She smiles thinly.

“I shall miss you, Anthony,” she says, and though they have had their differences, Anthony knows he will miss her, too. He’s sorry to leave her when she cannot escape, and surely she is hurting just as he is, and with far greater cause.

But she brought Edward of York into their lives when Anthony might have easily spent a less painful lifetime hating him, so for once, Anthony Woodville is selfish.

Anthony is selfish, and he leaves.

* * *

_(Later)_

Travel does not bring Anthony peace. It brings him distance, true, which is a relief in itself, but it cures nothing. Anthony arrives in Rome, in the holiest house in Christendom, and realizes immediately he has been far holier places, all of them tinted the precise shade of Edward’s eyes.

Still, for a time he stays gone. He travels through Italy and then heads north. He helps his kinsman the Duke of Burgundy fight the Swiss. He distracts himself, playing at swords for little wars over which he feels nothing, and is relieved by the knowledge that it is possible not to feel he owes his entire self to anyone, or anything.

He has a dream one night, or a memory; he isn’t sure. But it is Edward’s face, Edward’s voice.

“Come back to me, Anthony. Come back.”

So he does.

When Anthony arrives back in London after nearly a year, Edward is finally ruling in peace. He is standing in his privy chambers, listening to one of his nobles with his head bent, when Anthony enters the room. At first, Edward doesn’t look up, not noticing Anthony’s entrance, but as heads turn to the door, Edward’s golden brow furrows, and then his eyes rise to meet Anthony’s as they so often have.

Edward says it in a voiceless whisper; a sound from a dream. “Anthony.”

Anthony tries to smile, but can’t. Edward, consummate king that he is, gathers himself first and dismisses the other nobles. He says something about how they’ll continue later, discussing something of note before apologizing for his need to greet his wife’s brother, but Anthony hears nothing. He only sees the authority in Edward’s shoulders and the certainty of a king who no longer lives in fear, and he is so happy for Edward, so proud, that he can scarcely breathe.

And then, when they are alone, Edward crosses the room and has Anthony in his arms without a second’s hesitation.

“Anthony,” Edward says breathlessly, “you’re home—”

And then he lowers his mouth to Anthony’s.

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise. Perhaps it is, but Anthony wants it too much to waste his time on hesitation. He meets Edward’s kiss as though it is the most natural thing in the world, as if there is nothing else to do but taste him, luxuriate in his touch, revel in the closeness of him that Anthony has longed for, forever. That there might be some other response to being kissed by Edward never once crosses Anthony’s mind.

“You said you would never leave me,” Edward says into Anthony’s mouth, his hands shaking only slightly as he spreads his kingly palms against the fabric of Anthony’s shirt. “You said,” he rasps, and Anthony gasps as the kiss deepens, “you would never go, that you loved me, Anthony, you said you loved me—”

“I do,” Anthony says, his fingers threading through Edward’s golden hair. “I do, Edward, I do.”

“I missed you, Anthony,” Edward says raggedly, and cups his hand around Anthony’s jaw, sliding his thumb over Anthony’s throat. “I missed you, Anthony.” He kisses Anthony’s neck. “Anthony.” His lips slide along Anthony’s jaw, his tongue slipping out to brush against Anthony’s ear. “Anthony.” Brusquely, Edward wrestles him back, forcing him against the wall. “Anthony,” Edward says again, as if the more times he says it, the more real it will feel.

Anthony, meanwhile, throbs at Edward’s touch, groaning with want, but there is something bothersome about letting Edward take control. This is Edward, a notorious philanderer, and it roils in Anthony’s chest to think Edward might have touched someone else this way. So he shoves Edward back, doing the unthinkable, and pushing the King of England—this man, whom Anthony loves so desperately—away.

Edward blinks. “Anthony, I—”

“Not like this,” Anthony says. “I’m not one of your whores, Edward.”

It registers like a slap across Edward’s face. “No,” he says, when he can manage to conjure his voice. “No, you aren’t, Anthony. But I am the King of England, am I not?” he prompts, waving a hand around his chambers. “And what would you have me do, Anthony? A king does not beg. I would not possess this throne or this crown or this country if I had ever bent to any man’s wishes.”

Anthony is uncertain whether to be angry or sorry; unsure whether to strike Edward’s arrogant face or yank him back and kiss him sweetly.

“A king,” Edward repeats as Anthony stares at him, “does not beg.”

Then, unthinkably, Edward lowers slowly to his knees, his eyes rising up to Anthony’s.

“But I will beg for you,” Edward whispers.

His hands rise to Anthony’s hips, settling on them as he rests his head against Anthony’s stomach, and in an instant, Anthony is done for. He is utterly ruined, crumbling in devastation, and Anthony collapses to a heap of nothing to pull Edward close to him, to align their hands and breaths and mouths.

“You will never have to beg for me,” Anthony says. “You will have me until you die. Until I die. Until we both rot to nothing. You will never have to be anything more or less than what you are,” he says to Edward, his fingers curling around the beat of Edward’s heart, “and I am sorry I asked for more. I’m sorry I left. I was wrong. I am nothing but wrong, Edward, but I swear to you, I am still yours. I am always yours.”

Edward kisses him again. Anthony can feel the muscle that won a kingship shifting beneath his hands. He will love Edward tonight. He will have Edward, for as long as he can, tonight.

“Anthony,” Edward says hoarsely, “you are the greatest man in England,” and Anthony thinks of how far they’ve come; because Anthony has known for a lifetime that he would either love Edward of York, or hate him. He thinks perhaps there is a world where things are different, where his loyalty never strays from Lancaster and he dies unburdened, never questioning what might have been, but this is not that world.

In this world, Anthony will walk this earth for love of Edward of York until they put his broken body in the dirt, and then he will love Edward for an eternity afterward.

“Á York,” Anthony says, putting his hands on Edward’s bare skin, and Edward holds him still.

“Á Rivers,” Edward corrects him, and Anthony knows he will never leave Edward again.

* * *

_(Next)_

Except he does.

Elizabeth asks Anthony if he will protect her son— _Edward’s_ son—and Anthony agrees. He has taken joy in Edward’s arms countless times by then, and knows he has already been selfish enough for a lifetime. Edward insists his own brother Richard can take the boy, or perhaps someone else suitable can be found, but Anthony knows better. He knows no one will love Edward’s son more than he does. No man on earth would be so willing to die for Edward’s son than Anthony, who has loved Edward most of all.

But this time, Edward will not weep for Anthony’s loss, because this time he is not losing Anthony. This absence will be difficult, but they belong to each other now in a way they did not when Anthony left before. Now, there is a piece of Edward that will never leave Anthony. There is a piece of Anthony that will never be gone from Edward.

So, once again, Anthony goes.

“He is as dear to me as life itself,” Anthony says of Edward’s son, and his sister, the Queen, nods through her tears, blessing them both. “And I will not leave him,” Anthony promises fiercely, “not even for Jerusalem. Not even if God Himself commands me.”

For a moment, Anthony permits his gaze to slide to Edward’s. They have said their goodbyes privately, but still, this is what Anthony wishes Edward to remember most of all.

“I will not leave him,” Anthony promises Edward, “until he commands me to go.”

Edward’s mouth twitches with acknowledgement, and he nods, throat clearly tight with anguish he will never be free to show. He is a man of triumph, a king who has never lost in battle, and who can never openly possess any less than a victor’s strength.

But still, Anthony is satisfied, because Edward understands he has kept his promise.

From here forward, Anthony will look at Edward’s son and see his own Rivers eyes paired with that golden York hair, and it will mean something; it will mean everything. Anthony will take Edward’s son to safety and raise him to be a man; a man like his father, who is the greatest man in England. Anthony will raise Edward’s son as if he were his own, and one day, when Edward’s son asks Anthony about his father the King, Anthony will tell him one version of an entire truth, and it will be the same words he has spoken to Edward so many breathless times—

He loves him, he loves him, he loves him.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anthony Woodville is quite famous for having been poetic and intelligent; one of the first books printed in England was a translation by Anthony that was famously presented to Edward. Anthony died months after Edward, when he was beheaded for his efforts to protect Prince Edward from King Richard III.


End file.
